tIBRARY  OF  PRINCETON 

f^OV  -  3  11" 

THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

BX   5937.S44    S4    1902 
Siiipman,   Jacob  s. 
Sermons 


LIBRARY  OF  PRINCETON 

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THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


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u^y/l-Of^-^^''^^--*^^ 


SERMONS 


BY  THE 


Rev.  Jacob  S.  Shipman,  D.D. 


Rector  of  Christ  Church 
New  York  City 


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LIBRARY  OF  PRINCETON 


THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

3 1  West  Twenty-Third  Street 

1902 


Copyright 

E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

igo2 

Published,  Dec,  igo2 


DEDICATION. 

The  author  of  this  volume  had  long 
looked  forward  to  a  time  when,  relieved 
from  the  duties  of  active  parish  life,  he 
might  find  opportunity  to  place  in  more 
permanent  form  the  best  results  of  his 
thought  and  study,  as  these  had  been 
embodied  in  his  sermons  and  addresses. 
Before  this  time  came  to  him,  a  dark- 
ness fell  between  his  mind  and  the  outer 
world. 

It  is  more  than  probable  that,  had  the 
choice  been  his,  other  sermons  than  some 
that  are  included  here  might  have  been 
selected  ;  it  is  more  than  probable  that, 
in  reviewing  the  sermons  finally  selected, 
changes  and  corrections  would  have  been 
made, —  changes  and  corrections  impossi- 


ble  for  other  hands  than  the  author's  own 
to  make. 

It  is  to  us  certain,  however,  that  what- 
ever might  have  been  the  form,  arrange- 
ment, and  contents  of  a  volume  prepared 
for  pubHcation  by  himself,  its  dedication 
would  have  been  to  her  who,  through 
bright  days  and  dark,  and  to  the  end, 
stood  nearest  to  him,  as  she  was,  beyond 
all,  dearest  to  him.  It  is  therefore  with 
the  belief  that  we  are  fulfilling  what 
would  have  been  his  wish,  and  also  with 
a  great  desire  to  link  with  his  some  evi- 
dence of  our  love  and  admiration,  that 
we,  their  children,  dedicate  this  volume 
to  the  memory  of  our  mother. 


CONTENTS 


The  Miracles  of  Our  Lord 
V  The  Resurrection-World 

The  Manifestation  of  Hidden 

Out-of-Church  Religion  . 

The  Atonement 

Love    ..... 

Our  Lord's  Divine  Humanity 
V  The  Resurrection 
X  The  Resurrection-Body    . 
X^The  Resurrection-World 

The  Holy  Trinity 

The  Triumphal  Entry 


PAGB 

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I 

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14 

Things 

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114 

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134 

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153 

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164 

THE  MIRACLES  OF  OUR  LORD. 

This  beginning  of  miracles  did  Jesus  in  Cana  of  Galilee, 
and  manifested  forth  his  glory.  And  his  disciples  believed 
on  him. — St.  John  ii.  ii. 

OTARTING  from  this  text,  I  might 
^^  take  for  my  subject  the  particular 
miracle  here  referred  to  ;  but,  instead  of 
that,  I  shall  take  for  my  subject  the  ques- 
tion. Is  any  miracle  at  all  really  credible? 

There  are  men  enouo-h  who  would  an- 
swer  this  question  with  an  emphatic  No. 
If  I  should  ask  them  why,  they  would 
answer,  Because  a  miracle  would,  of  ne- 
cessity, involve  the  violation  of  some  law 
of  nature.     I  deny  it. 

By  nature  we  mean  matter  and  its  forces. 
We  speak,  indeed,  of  the  nature  of  man 
and  the  nature  of  God,  of  an  intellectual 
nature,  and  of  a  moral  nature, — but  when 
we  use  the  word  "nature"  by  itself,  we 


mean  matter  and  its  forces.  Now  there  is 
no  doubt  that  the  characteristic  of  nature, 
in  this  meaning  of  the  word,  is  necessity. 
The  forces  of  nature  act  unconsciously — 
without  reflection,  without  voUtion  ;  and 
they  act  according  to  laws  that  are  strictly 
unvarying.  Let  this  be  granted.  I  see 
no  reason  to  believe  that  those  laws,  or 
any  of  them,  have  ever,  for  one  moment, 
been  suspended.  I  do  not  believe,  in 
fact,  that  any  one  of  them  has  been  sus- 
pended, for  one  moment,  since  the  world 
began. 

But  besides  nature  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  will ;  and  the  characteristic  of  will  is  not 
necessity,  but  freedom.  I  need  enter  into 
no  argument  to  make  this  statement  good, 
we  accept  the  fact  of  our  moral  freedom 
on  the  same  authority  on  which  we  ac- 
cept the  fact  of  our  own  existence — on 
the  authority  of  consciousness.  We  do 
not  simply  believe  it;  we  know  it.  All 
men  know  it.  We  recognize  it  in  all  the 
affairs  of  life — in  all  our  reflections   on 


our  own  actions,  and  in  all  our  conclu- 
sions with  regard  to  the  actions  of  others. 
The  most  uncompromising  necessitarian 
in  theory,  when  he  does  a  thoroughly  un- 
worthy thing,  blushes  over  it  with  shame, 
just  like  other  men ;  and  that  blush  tells 
the  story.  It  tells  that  the  real  conviction 
of  the  man's  heart  is  deeper  than  his  logic, 
and  orives  the  lie  to  it. 

Now  if  the  will  be  free — if  it  be  capable 
of  choosing — if  it  be  not  linked  into  the 
chain  of  necessary  causes,  then  it  is  not 
a  part  of  nature  ;  it  is  something  above 
nature  ;  in  one  word,  it  is  supernatural — 
not  unnatural,  or  preternatural,  but  super- 
natural. This  is  the  starting-point  of  my 
argument.  The  will  is  a  supernatural 
power ;  and  we,  because  of  it,  are  super- 
natural beings. 

My  next  proposition  is,  that  we,  by 
virtue  of  our  own  supernatural  power,  are 
capable  of  so  using  the  forces  of  nature 
as  to  cause  them  to  work  out  our  own 
purposes.      We   are   not  only  capable  of 

3 


doing  this,  but  we  actually  do  it  every 
day.  We  do  it,  not  by  violating  the  laws 
of  nature,  but  by  conforming  to  them. 
By  conforming  to  the  laws  of  nature,  we 
find  nature  pliant  to  our  wills — able  and 
ready  to  accomplish  results  which,  left  to 
itself,  it  never  could  accomplish.  Nature 
furnishes  the  forces  and  the  laws  by  which 
the  telegraph  performs  its  work ;  but 
nature  could  never  make  a  telegraph.  It 
could  never  make  a  watch,  or  a  steam 
engine,  or  a  plough.  It  cannot,  indeed, 
reasonably  be  claimed  that  the  human  will 
ever  introduces  any  new  force  into  nature  ; 
but  it  can  reasonably  be  claimed,  and  it 
must,  in  reason,  be  conceded,  that  the 
human  will  does  select,  and  combine,  and 
direct  the  forces  of  nature  to  accomplish 
its  own  particular  designs. 

My  third  proposition  is  this  :  that  if  we, 
by  the  simple  exercise  of  intelligence  and 
will,  can  accomplish  special  designs  in  na- 
ture,— not  in  violation  of,  but  in  accord- 
ance  with,    the   laws   of   nature,  —  much 

4 


more  can  God.  I  know,  indeed,  that  an 
objection  may  be  offered  just  here.  The 
changes  that  we  effect  in  nature,  it  may- 
be said,  are  effected  through  our  bodily 
organism.  Have  we  any  reason,  it  may 
be  asked,  to  beheve  that  spirit  can  act 
upon  matter  directly  ?  I  say  Yes,  with 
all  confidence.  I  say  Yes,  because  the 
fact  is  matter  of  immediate  consciousness. 
The  human  soul  is  spirit,  and  the  human 
body  is  matter.  From  the  nature  of  the 
case,  spirit  cannot  be  solidified  into  mat- 
ter, or  matter  be  sublimated  into  spirit. 
If,  therefore,  the  soul  acts  upon  the  body 
at  all  (as,  certainly,  we  know  it  does)  it 
acts  upon  it  directly.  How  the  soul  acts 
upon  the  body,  we  do  not  know ;  but  in 
whatever  way  it  does  so  act,  in  that  way, 
or  in  some  way  analogous  to  that,  it  is 
reasonable  to  believe,  God  acts  upon  the 
universe — the  whole  vast  organism  of  cre- 
ation being  as  responsive  to  His  will  as 
the  human  body  is  to  ours.  I  see  no  mid- 
dle ground  between  this  conclusion  and 
5 


the  denial  that  there  is  a  God  that  made 
the  world.  Of  course,  I  do  not  believe  in 
the  old  mechanical  theory  of  creation ; 
but  I  say  that  if  God  made  the  world — no 
matter  how — there  must  be  some  way  in 
which  His  will  can  direct  its  forces. 

In  the  truth  of  this  conviction,  let  me 
add,  I  feel  greatly  strengthened  by  that 
theory  towards  which  the  deepest  currents 
of  modern  thought  seem  drifting :  the 
theory  that  the  real  world — the  world  that 
we  never  see,  as  distinguished  from  this 
merely  phenomenal  world  that  we  do  see 
— is  not  material,  but  dynamical ;  in  other 
words,  that  the  real  substance  which  un- 
derlies phenomena,  and  constitutes  their 
causal  basis,  is  that  which  we  apprehend 
as  force — a  something  continually  efHuent 
from  the  Source  of  all  being,  a  something 
standing  in  immediate  and  uninterrupted 
connection  with  the  Divine  will.  Let  it 
be  observed,  however,  that  I  make  this 
theory  no  part  of  my  argument  for  the 
reasonableness  of  miracles.  That  argu- 
6 


ment  is  complete  without  it.  The  great 
truth  rests  upon  foundations  that  no  in- 
genuity can  overthrow, — the  truth  that 
there  is  no  more  intrinsic  absurdity  in  the 
idea  that  God  should  work  a  miracle  than 
there  is  in  the  idea  that  a  man  should  lift 
a  finger. 

But  it  may  be  asked,  Why,  if  the  case 
for  miracles  be  so  clear,  do  so  many  men 
of  competent  learning  and  keen  intelli- 
gence hold  them  to  be  impossible  ?  I 
have  thought  of  that.  That  many  men, 
learned  and  intelligent,  do  hold  miracles 
to  be  impossible  (practically  impossible,  at 
at  least)  is  no  doubt  a  fact.  Predispo- 
sition against  belief  in  miracles  seems  to 
be  in  the  air.  It  is  a  predisposition  that 
belongs  to  the  spirit  of  the  age ;  we  all 
feel  it.  I  should  be  dealing  deceitfully 
were  I  to  give  the  impression  that  I  do 
not  feel  it  myself.  But — how  to  account 
for  it.  The  contrast  between  the  strength 
of  this  predisposition  on  the  one  hand 
and    the    singular   lack    of    any    rational 

7 


support  that  has  ever  been  found  for  it 
on  the  other  is  something  remarkable. 
When  a  man  says  that  miracles  are  im- 
possible, and  you  ask  him  to  give  his 
reasons,  he  finds  himself  at  a  loss.  He 
cannot  formulate  his  objection  into  an 
argument ;  and  yet  his  objection  remains 
as  overpowering  to  his  mind  as  ever.  He 
can  only  repeat,  again  and  again,  that  a 
miracle  is  inconceivable.  And  just  this,  I 
am  thoroughly  persuaded,  is  what  is,  in- 
deed, the  matter.  The  difficulty  with  so 
many  men  is,  not  that  to  God  miracles 
are  impossible,  but  that  to  them  they  are 
inconceivable.  It  may  well  be  that  mir- 
acles are  inconceivable  to  them.  Con- 
ceivability,  in  this  meaning  of  it,  is  not  a 
thing  of  the  reason  ;  it  is  purely  a  thing 
of  the  imaorination.  The  modern  mind 
has  devoted  itself,  with  an  intense  de- 
votion, to  the  study  of  nature.  It  seems 
to  me  impossible  that  the  study  of  nature 
should  affect  belief  in  miracles  directly 
through  the  reason ;  but  I  can  easily  un- 
8 


derstand  how  such  study  might  affect 
belief  in  miracles  indirectly  through  the 
imagination  —  taking  the  imagination  as 
the  faculty  of  conceiving,  of  realizing.  I 
think,  in  fact,  that  in  this  way  the  common 
predisposition  against  miracles  has  come 
about.  It  has  come  through  the  im- 
agination passively  yielding  itself  to  the 
constant  spectacle  of  nature's  regularity. 
Men  have  suffered  the  weight  of  this  im- 
pression to  press  upon  their  minds  until 
their  sense  of  possibility  has  come  to  be 
restricted  to  the  mould  of  physical  order. 
Their  minds  have  gotten  materialized 
down  to  the  point  where,  as  they  say, 
they  cannot  imagine  such  a  thing  as  a 
supernatural  occurrence;  and  then  they 
have  come  to  mistake  this  blind  insistence 
of  a  mental  habit  —  this  mere  inability  to 
realize  what  they  have  never  experienced 
—  for  a  rational  conviction.  The  root 
of  their  difficulty  lies  in  the  assumption 
that  inconceivability  and  incredibility  are 
practically  one  and  the  same  thing.     As  a 

9 


matter  of  fact,  if  we  could  believe  only 
that  of  which  we  can  conceive,  we  should 
have  to  reject  many  credible  things  ^ —  and, 
first  and  foremost,  the  fact  of  the  exist- 
ence of  Almighty  God. 

So  much  for  miracles  in  general.  Let 
me  now  speak — but  briefly — of  the  mir- 
acles of  our  Lord. 

It  has  been  often  said  that  even  if  the 
abstract  possibility  of  miracles  were  con- 
ceded, the  improbability  of  their  actual 
occurrence  is  so  vast  as  to  make  the  con- 
cession practically  worthless.  Now  I  am 
ready  to  grant  that  were  the  working  of 
miracles  recorded  of  any  mere  man,  the 
improbability  of  the  record's  being  true 
would  be  well-nigh  overwhelming.  But 
the  claim  is,  on  the  part  of  Christians, 
that  Christ  was  not  a  mere  man.  I  shall 
not  stop  to  discuss  the  grounds  on  which 
this  claim  is  rested.  It  is  not  in  the  least 
necessary  to  my  purpose.  I  simply  say 
that  if  this  claim  be  true,  the  whole  face 
of  the  matter  changes.     Men  may  deny 

lO 


the  Incarnation  as  a  fact ;  but  they  must 
admit  the  strong  presumption  that,  if  so 
extraordinary  a  fact  were  to  occur,  it 
would  be  followed  and  attested  by  extra- 
ordinary events,  that,  if  the  chain  of  causa- 
tion were  thus  to  be  struck  by  the  hand  of 
God,  the  vibration  would  be  felt  through 
all  its  links — that  the  miracle  of  such  a 
personality  would  give  birth  to  miracles 
of  power.  There  is  no  direct  argument, 
therefore,  to  be  brought  against  the  prob- 
ability of  the  Gospel  miracles.  The  only 
argument  through  which  this  point  could 
possibly  be  reached  would  be  an  argument 
against  the  probability  that  God  would 
intervene,  in  the  way  in  which  the  Chris- 
tian creeds  declare  He  did,  for  the  res- 
toration of  man.  And  such  an  argument 
would  be  not  only  unscientific  and  value- 
less, but  to  the  last  degree  presumptuous. 
No  man  can  know  the  counsels  of  the 
Omniscient.  No  man  is  better  qualified 
to  give  an  opinion  as  to  what  the  wisdom 
and  the  love  of  God  might  prompt  Him 


to  do,  or  not  to  do,  than  the  spider  that 
weaves  its  web  upon  the  grass  is  qual- 
ified to  criticise  the  architecture  of  the 
worlds. 

My  argument  for  miracles  is  now  fin- 
ished. What  I  have  been  saying  has  been 
said,  for  one  thing,  because  the  miracles  of 
our  Lord  have  come  to  form  the  dividing 
line  between  what  is  commonly  under- 
stood as  belief  and  what  is  commonly  un- 
derstood as  unbelief.  It  has  been  said,  for 
another  thing,  because  there  are  those  to- 
day, holding  the  place  of  religious  teach- 
ers, who  are  saying  just  the  opposite. 
Indeed,  to  speak  slightingly  of  miracles — 
to  strip  religion  of  all  that  is  supernatural 
— has  come  to  be  accepted  with  multitudes 
of  people  as  a  sign  of  freshness,  and  liber- 
ality, and  breadth  ;  and  the  men  who  do 
this  thing  are  almost  sure  of  a  popular 
following.  Certainly,  I  myself  can  pre- 
tend to  no  indifference  to  popular  regard. 
I  should  like,  above  most  things  in  this 
world,  to  speak,  from  Sunday  to  Sunday, 

12 


to  crowded  and  interested  congregations. 
But  if,  to  reach  this  end,  I  should  have  to 
turn  from  the  voice  of  Reason  to  listen 
to  the  low  vague  mutterings  of  that  so 
changeful,  and  often  so  misleading,  div- 
inity, the  Zez^  Geist,  or  Spirit  of  the  Age, — 
if,  to  be  considered  broad,  I  should  have 
to  be  broader  than  was  He  in  whose  name 
alone  I  have  any  right,  as  a  Christian  min- 
ister or  as  an  honest  man,  to  speak  from 
this  pulpit,  it  would  be  better  that  my 
words  should  be  echoed  back  from  empty 
walls,  or  that  my  lips  should  be  forever 
sealed. 


13 


THE  RESURRECTION-WORLD. 

Man  giveth  up  the  ghost,  and  where  is  he  ? — Job  xiv.  lo. 

TJAVING  spoken  of  the  resurrection, 
and  of  the  resurrection-body,  I  am 
to  speak  this  morning  of  the  resurrection- 
world —  meaning  by  that  the  world  into 
which  men  rise  on  leaving  this  world  in 
which  they  die. 

The  subject  thus  announced  stands  in 
very  close  connection  with  that  of  our 
Lord's  ascension  ;  and  as  this  is  the  last 
Sunday  before  Ascension-day,  I  shall 
introduce  what  I  have  to  say  with  the 
question,  In  what  sense,  consistent  with 
Scripture  and  with  reason,  can  the  fact 
of  the  Ascension  be  understood  ? 

It  is  commonly  supposed  that,  because 
our  Lord  went  up  in  the  sight  of  His  dis- 
ciples from  Mount  Olivet,  He  must,  there- 
14 


fore,  have  continued  to  go  up  until  He 
reached  Heaven,  and  the  throne  of  God, 
and  the  innumerable  company  of  angels, 
far  away  on  some  wandering  planet  or 
fixed  star.  From  this  view  of  the  matter, 
both  my  reason  and  my  reading  of  the 
Bible  compel  me  to  dissent.  In  the  first 
place,  we  are  expressly  assured  that  "  flesh 
and  blood  cannot  inherit  the  kingdom  of 
God" — that  is,  the  world  that  we  call 
Heaven.  Into  that  world,  therefore,  our 
Lord,  with  His  body  of  flesh  and  blood, 
could  not  have  entered.  In  the  second 
place,  any  world  that  could  be  reached  by 
passing  from  this  world  through  space, 
must  lie  in  the  same  space  with  this  world, 
and  therefore  must,  of  course,  be,  like  this 
world,  material.  Materiality  does  not 
cease  to  be  material  by  simply  being  dis- 
tant. As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  demon- 
strable that  the  remotest  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  that  we  can  see  —  that  dimmest 
of  the  fixed  stars,  to  reach  which,  though 
travelling  with  the  speed  of  light,  would 

IS 


t 


require  not  less  than  forty  thousand  years 
—  is  as  thoroughly  material  as  this  earth 
of  ours.  It  follows  that  if  the  world  into 
which  our  Lord  ascended  was  a  spiritual 
world,  His  true  ascension  could  not  have 
been  through  space. 

But  here  I  anticipate  a  question.  Why, 
it  will  be  asked,  if  our  Lord  did  not  con- 
tinue to  ascend  through  space  to  Heaven, 
did  He  lift  His  body  from  the  earth  at 
all  ?  Why  did  he  not  vanish  into  the 
spiritual  world  by  simply  dissipating  the 
elements  of  that  body  as  He  stood  in 
the  midst  of  His  disciples?  Doubtless,  He 
might  have  done  so.  But,  in  that  case. 
His  disciples — slow  of  heart  as  they  were 
to  believe,  earth-bound  as  were  their  con- 
ceptions still  —  would  still  have  watched 
and  waited  to  see  Him  reappear  in  their 
secret  assemblies,  or  by  the  lonely  lake- 
side, as  had  been  His  wont.  His  rising 
visibly  from  their  midst  before  withdraw- 
ing into  the  world  invisible,  was  intended, 
I  believe,  to  teach  them  the  more  impres- 
i6 


sively  that  this  departure,  unlike  His 
former  vanishings  from  their  view,  was  to 
be  no  temporary  withdrawal,  but  the  sol- 
emn close  of  all  sensible  intercourse  with 
the  Church  until  the  consummation  and 
the  end  of  all  things.  Just  as  our  Lord 
had  appeared  in  His  material  body,  not 
as  any  necessary  part  of  the  resurrection, 
but  simply  to  give  assurance  that  He  had 
risen  indeed,  so  now  He  ^/jrappeared  in 
His  material  body,  not  as  any  necessary 
part  of  the  ascension,  but  simply  to  leave 
assurance  that  He  had  indeed  ascended. 

To  the  minds  of  many,  this  teaching 
may  seem  to  make  the  spiritual  world  — 
the  world  to  which  our  Lord  ascended  — 
unsubstantial.  I  can  quite  understand 
that  it  should  be  so.  It  is  very  curious 
how  the  meaning  of  the  word  substance, 
in  popular  usage,  and  the  meaning  of  the 
same  word  as  used  in  philosophical  think- 
ing, are  opposed  to  each  other.  They 
are  opposed  to  each  other  pointedly  and 
exactly.       In    popular    usage,    substance 

17 


means  that  which  we  can  perceive  or  con- 
ceive of  by  means  of  the  senses.  In  the 
usage  of  philosophy,  "  substance  "  means  • 
nothing  of  the  kind.  In  the  usage  of 
philosophy,  all  that  we  can  perceive  or 
conceive  of  by  means  of  the  senses  be- 
longs exclusively  to  the  category  of  the 
phenomenal  —  substance  meaning,  as  the 
word  implies,  the  unperceivable,  inscru- 
table something  which  stands  under 
phenomena,  and  supports  them  as  cause 
supports  effect.  In  popular  usage,  the 
substantial  world  is  the  world  which  we 
see  around  us,  and  whose  objects  we  can 
touch.  In  philosophic  usage,  the  sub- 
stantial world  is  a  world  which  we  can  no 
more  see  or  touch  than  we  can  see  or 
touch  the  things  that  lie  beyond  the  river 
of  death. 

Most  gladly  would  I  avoid,  in  this  dis- 
cussion, everything  that  might  be  unin- 
telligible even  to  the  most  unpractised 
understanding.  But,  consistently  with 
my  purpose,  I  cannot  do  it.  To  the  sin- 
i8 


cere  believer,  no  other  warrant  is  needed 
for  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  spiritual 
world  than  simple  faith  in  God's  almighti- 
ness.  But,  unhappily,  all  men  have  not 
this  simple  faith ;  and  if  we  would  render 
rational,  either  to  our  own  minds,  or  to  the 
minds  of  others,  the  possibility  of  such  a 
world,  there  is  but  one  thing  for  it ;  we 
must  render  to  ourselves  some  rational 
account  of  this  world  that  we  call  mate- 
rial,— what  it  is  and  how  it  came  to  be. 

Of  the  substance  of  this  material  world, 
the    senses,  I  have  said,   tell  us  nothing. 
What  we  call    matter   is   not    substance. 
It  is   simply  an    aggregate   of   effects  — 
effects  produced  not  outside   of   us,   but 
within    our   own    consciousness.       These 
effects    depend    partly    upon    regulative 
powers  within  our  own  minds,  and  partly 
upon  a  cause  external  to  our  minds.     The 
popular  fallacy  consists  in  regarding  them 
as  properties  of  things  —  in  regarding,  for 
example,  sound,  and  light,  and  heat,  and 
color  as  inherent    in    objects  outside    of 
19 


us ;  whereas  science  has  demonstrated 
that  outside  of  us  there  is  nothing  to  oc- 
casion our  perception  of  them  but  simply 
motion  —  the  pecuHar  kind  and  character 
of  the  motion  determining  the  nature 
of  the  effect.  The  sense  of  touch  gives 
us  nothing  but  a  state  of  our  own  con- 
sciousness  —  a  feeHng,  namely,  of  more 
or  less  resistance.  Even  what  we  call 
extension  is  purely  phenomenal.  It  is 
purely  relative.  It  is  simply  the  measure 
of  certain  powers  within  ourselves.  Were 
those  powers  diminished  a  million-fold, 
things  around  us  would  be  enlarged  a 
million-fold.  Were  those  powers  en- 
larged a  million-fold,  things  around  us 
would  be  diminished  in  the  same  ratio. 
Were  those  powers  made  infinite,  exten- 
sion would  disappear.  "  It  is  wholly  in- 
conceivable," says  Professor  Huxley,  "  that 
what  we  call  extension  should  exist  inde- 
pendently of  such  consciousness  as  our 
own." 

I  repeat,  then,  that  what  are  popularly 


regarded  as  properties  of  matter  are 
really  effects  within  ourselves,  and  that 
these  effects  depend  for  their  existence 
partly  upon  regulative  powers  within  our 
own  minds,  and  partly  upon  a  cause  ex- 
ternal to  our  minds.  What  is  the  nature 
of  the  cause  external  to  our  own  minds,  is 
not  a  matter  of  immediate  perception.  It 
is  simply  a  matter  of  inference.  The  con- 
clusion to  which,  in  general,  the  great 
leaders  of  modern  thought  both  in  sci- 
ence  and  in  philosophy  have  come,  is, 
that  it  is  simply  force  —  or,  rather,  that 
form  of  the  Divine  energy  which  we  ap- 
prehend as  force.  "  The  ultimate  bearing 
of  scientific  truth,"  says  the  Duke  of 
Argyll,  in  his  Reign  of  Law,  *'  cannot  be 
mistaken.  .  .  .  Nothing  is  more  re- 
markable in  the  present  state  of  physical 
research,  than  what  may  be  called  the 
transcendental  character  of  its  results. 
.  .  .  Under  the  subtle  analysis  of  the 
physiologist,  the  chemist,  and  the  electri- 
cian,   matter    dissolves    and    disappears, 

21 


surviving  only  as  the  phenomena  of  force ; 
which,  again,  is  seen  converging  along  all 
its  lines  to  some  common  centre  —  '  slop- 
ing through  darkness  up  to  God.' " 

"The  great  lesson  which  Berkeley  taught 
mankind,"  says  Mr.  John  Fiske,  in  his 
essay  on  The  Unseen  World,  "was  that 
what  we  call  material  phenomena  are 
really  the  products  of  consciousness  co- 
operating with  some  Unknown  Power  (not 
material)  existing  beyond  our  conscious- 
ness. We  do  very  well  to  speak  of  '  mat- 
ter '  in  common  parlance,  but  all  that  the 
word  really  means  is  a  group  of  qualities, 
which  have  no  existence  apart  from  our 
minds.  Modern  philosophers  have  quite 
generally  accepted  this  conclusion  ;  and 
every  attempt  to  overturn  it  has  resulted 
in  complete  and  disastrous  failure.  In 
admitting  this,  we  do  not  admit  the  con- 
clusion of  Absolute  Idealism,  that  nothing 
exists  outside  of  consciousness.  What  we 
admit  as  existing  independently  of  con- 
sciousness, is  the  Power  that  causes  in  us 


those  conscious  states  which  we  call  the 
perception  of  material  qualities.  We  have 
no  reason  for  regarding  this  Power  as  in 
itself  material ;  indeed  we  cannot  do  so. 
.  .  .  We  are  thus  led,"  he  continues, 
"  to  the  inference  that  what  we  call  the 
material  universe  is  but  the  manifestation 
of  infinite  Deity  to  our  finite  minds ;  and 
matter  —  the  only  thing  to  which  materi- 
alists concede  real  existence  —  is  simply 
an  orderly  phantasmagoria  ;  and  God  and 
the  soul  —  which  materialists  regard  as 
mere  fictions  of  the  imagination  —  are 
the  only  conceptions  that  answer  to  real 
existences." 

To  those  who  have  followed  me  thus 
far,  the  bearing  of  what  has  now  been 
said,  must,  I  think,  be  evident.  If  crea- 
tion does  not  mean  the  manufacture  of  a 
substance,  but  simply  the  production  of 
phenomenal  forms  through  the  interaction 
of  infinite  Power  with  finite  mind,  then  — 
given  the  fact  that  we  survive  death  —  it 
is  just  as  rationally  conceivable  that  we 

23 


shall  find  ourselves  surrounded  by  another 
world  as  it  is  certain  that  we  find  our- 
selves surrounded  by  a  world  here  and 
now.  "  There  may  be,"  says  the  author 
just  now  quoted,  "  there  may  be,  and  in 
all  probability  is,  an  immense  region  of 
existence  in  every  way  as  real  as  the  re- 
gion which  we  know,  yet  concerning 
which  we  cannot  form  the  faintest  rudi- 
ment of  a  conception.  .  .  .  It  is  a 
belief  which  no  imaginable  future  advance 
in  physical  discovery  can  in  any  way  im- 
pugn. It  is  a  belief  which  is  in  no  sense 
irrational,  and  which  may  be  logically  en- 
tertained without  in  the  least  affecting 
our  scientific  habit  of  mind,  or  influencing 
our  scientific  conclusions."  For  my  own 
part,  I  hold  this  belief  as  a  clear,  down- 
right conviction  —  not  simply  as  a  matter 
of  faith,  but  as  a  rational  conviction.  I 
find  no  more  difficulty  in  believing  that 
another  world  awaits  us  on  the  farther 
shore  of  death  than  I  find  in  believing 
that  beyond  the  Atlantic  Ocean  lies  the 
24 


continent  of  Europe.  And  I  believe  that 
that  world  is,  to  repeat  the  words  of  Mr. 
Fiske,  "  in  every  way  as  real  as  this  world 
which  we  know."  I  would  like  to  make  this 
point  emphatic,  because  I  have  spoken 
of  the  spiritual  world  as  in  its  nature 
phenomenal.  There  is,  in  truth,  no  pos- 
sibility of  any  w^orld  that  is  not  phenom- 
enal. All  creation  must  be  phenomenal 
from  the  necessity  of  the  case.  God 
Himself  is  the  sum  of  all  substantial  be- 
ing ;  and  that  sum  can  neither  be  added  to 
nor  taken  from.  But  the  phenomenal 
does  not  mean  the  unreal.  It  means  sim- 
ply that  which  has  not  the  ground  of  its 
being  within  itself.  This  world  that  we 
call  material  is  phenomenal.  And  yet  we 
never  complain  of  it  as  unreal.  We 
never  think  of  it  as  not  solid  enough  be- 
neath  our  feet.  We  never  feel  that  we 
ourselves,  or  our  friends,  are  ghosts.  We 
need  have  no  fears  on  this  score  about 
the  next  world.  That  world  will  certainly 
be   not  less  real,   in   any  way,  than  this. 

25 


If  it  seems  as  nothing  to  us  now,  it  is 
simply  because  we  are  not  now  in  the 
spiritual  condition.  When  we  shall  have 
passed  into  that  condition,  the  spiritual 
will  be  the  only  real,  and  the  material 
will,  in  turn,  become  as  nothing. 

Another  thing  —  a  thing  which  I  can- 
not prove,  but  which  I  hold  as  reasonable 
—  is  this :  that  between  the  material 
world  and  the  spiritual,  notwithstanding 
the  gulf  of  difference  between  them  in 
nature,  there  is  a  close  resemblance  as  to 
types  and  forms.     Milton  wrote  : 

What  if  earth 
Be  but  the  shadow  of  Heaven,  and  things  therein 
Each  to  other  like,  more  than  below  is  thought ! 

nd  why  not?  God  is  the  author  of 
both  worlds  alike.  Both  worlds  alike 
are  expressions  of  His  thought.  It  is 
not  God's  way  to  use  a  plan  and  then 
fling  it  aside  as  if  it  had  proved  a  failure. 
In  the  crystal  we  find  a  "  mute  prophecy  " 
of  the  vegetable  ;  in  the  vegetable,  of  the 
animal ;  in  the  animal,  of  man.  We  find 
26 


creative  plans,  not  abandoned,  but  em- 
bodied in  ever  higher  and  more  perfect 
forms.  On  this  principle  we  should  ex- 
pect to  find  whatever  is  good  and  beauti- 
ful in  this  world  better  and  more  perfect 
in  the  next.  I  know  many  shrink  from 
imagining  that  there  is  anything  in  Hea- 
ven at  all  like  things  of  earth. 

Bright  fields  beyond  the  swelling  flood 
Stand  dressed  in  living  green — 

SO  they  will  sing  in  church  ;  but  tell  them 
at  home  that  you  really  think  there  will  be 
fields,  and  trees,  and  flowers  in  Heaven, 
and  they  will  call  it  materializing  Heaven. 
The  reason  is,  that  they  have  materialized 
themselves  down  to  the  point  where  they 
can  see  nothing  divine  or  spiritual  in  the 
world  around  them,  and  then  they  look 
upon  it  as  a  matter  of  religion  to  think  of 
the  next  world  as  in  all  points  the  exact 
negation  of  this.  There  may  be  some- 
thing religious  in  this  way  of  thinking, 
but  I  confess  I  cannot  see  it. 
27 


Be  this,  however,  as  it  may,  there  is  one 
point  about  which  I  feel  sure  —  a  point 
which,  no  matter  how  often  I  may  have 
made  it,  I  shall  never  willingly  miss  any 
fair  opportunity  of  making  again.  The 
point  I  mean  is  this, — that  the  spiritual 
world  does  not  lie  apart  from  this  world 
in  space.  It  cannot.  It  cannot,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  the  division  between 
the  two  worlds  is  not  in  space,  but  in  our- 
selves. It  is  a  division  between  two  dif- 
ferent sets  of  senses  —  those  on  the  one 
hand  belonging  to  the  natural  body,  and 
those  on  the  other  hand  belonging  to  the 
spiritual  body.  The  same  spiritual  sub- 
stance underlies  both  worlds.  The  same 
procession  of  the  Divine  energy  interact- 
ing with  the  human  mind,  produces  both. 
The  only  difference  is,  that  to  produce 
the  natural  world  the  divine  energy  in- 
teracts with  that  part  of  our  nature  which 
St.  Paul  calls  the  psychical,  or  natural  ; 
while,  to  produce  the  spiritual,  it  will  have 
to  interact  with  that  part  of  our  nature 
28 


which  the  same  apostle  calls  the  pneumat- 
ical,  or  spiritual.  Death  means  simply 
the  shifting  of  this  point  of  interaction. 
Life  will  not  be  interrupted.  The  world 
will  not  cease  to  exist,  but  will  be  trans- 
figured. As  it  fades  from  our  view  in  its 
natural  form,  it  will  dawn  upon  us  in  its 
spiritual  form.  When  we  die  we  shall 
not  have  to  go  through  the  air  to  get  to 
the  spiritual  world.  It  will  need  no  trans- 
ition through  space.  It  will  be  like  the 
removal  of  the  bandage  from  the  eyes  of 
one  who  has  been  blindfolded.  This,  I 
think,  we  may  be  said  to  know.  To  my 
own  mind  certainly  it  is  as  clear  as  the 
clearest  demonstration  in  mathematics. 
Into  other  questions  suggested  by  the 
subject  —  questions  which  can  be  an- 
swered only  with  opinion  —  I  shall  not 
enter.  My  sole  aim  in  this  discourse  has 
been  to  demonstrate  that  for  belief  in  a 
spiritual  world  there  is  a  rational  basis.  I 
am  convinced  that  for  multitudes  of  men 
such  demonstration  is  the  one  thing 
29 


wanting.  With  multitudes  of  men  the  su- 
preme difficulty  in  believing  is  not  the  ques- 
tion, "  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?" 
but, "  If  a  man  live  again,  where  shall  he  find 
a  world  to  live  in  —  a  world  real,  and  yet 
not  material  ?  "  In  that  view  of  creation 
which  I  have  now  been  trying  to  set  forth 
—  a  view  towards  which  all  the  drifts  of 
modern  thought  are  setting  —  this  diffi- 
culty is  met.  In  that  view  it  is  clearly 
seen  that  the  existence  of  another  world, 
with  its  spreading  landscapes,  with  its  in- 
telligent and  eager  throngs,  is  perfectly 
consistent  with  every  principle  of  reason, 
with  every  postulate  of  science.  '*  Thus, we 
have  reached  a  point,"  I  believe,  where, 
as  another  says,  "  faith  may  look  into  the 
future  undisturbed  by  any  news  that  sci- 
ence may  bring  us  from  the  stars,  or  by 
any  question  as  to  where  the  living  who 
have  gone  from  us  abide.  And  thus  our 
latest  thought,  sent  forth  like  Noah's 
dove,  to  search  over  the  depths  for  the 
everlasting  hills,  brings  back  upon  its 
30 


wings  the  perfume  of  unseen  lands,  and 
some  fresh  signs  of  that  rest  that  shall 
remain  when  the  flood  of  the  years  shall 
have  passed  away." 


3' 


THE  MANIFESTATIONS  OF 
HIDDEN  THINGS. 

Who  both  will  bring  to  light  the  hidden  things  of  dark- 
ness, and  will  make  manifest  the  counsels  of  the  hearts, — 
I  Cor.  iv.  5. 

TT  was  once  remarked,  by  one  of  the 
greatest  of  English  preachers,  that 
**  Few  sermons  so  commend  themselves 
to  the  imagination,  and  yet  few  sermons 
so  little  impress  the  conscience  and  the 
heart,  as  those  descriptive  of  the  last  judg- 
ment." The  remark,  I  think,  is  true.  And 
the  reason  why  it  is  true,  I  think,  is  this : 
that  sermons,  for  the  most  part,  in  dealing 
with  the  last  judgment,  incline  to  make 
everything  of  what  is  dramatic  and  purely 
figurative  in  its  representation,  to  the  ne- 
glect of  what  is  essential  in  its  process. 

The  representation    of   the    last   judg- 
ment, as  given   us   in    Holy  Scripture,    I 
32 


call  figurative.  I  call  it  so,  advisedly.  I 
call  it  so,  reverently.  It  is  natural  that  it 
should  be  figurative.  It  is  the  peculiarity 
of  Scripture  prophecy  to  deal  in  figures. 
And  this  peculiarity  is  the  most  striking 
in  those  prophecies  which  treat  of  what 
are  called  the  last  things.  Take  the 
Revelation  of  St.  John.  The  horses  and 
the  horsemen,  the  dragon  and  the  beasts, 
the  earthquakes  and  the  trumpets,  the 
bottomless  pit,  with  its  lock  and  key,  the 
golden  city,  with  its  jasper  walls  and  its 
angel-guarded  gates,  the  books  and  seals, 
the  emerald  throne,  the  crystal  sea,  the 
river  of  life — surely  no  one  ever  yet  has 
dreamed  of  understanding  these  as  any- 
thing but  symbols. 

Take,  again,  the  occurrences  predicted 
by  our  Lord  as  to  attend  the  ruin  of  the 
Jewish  state  and  nation — the  shaking  of 
the  powers  of  Heaven,  the  darkening  of 
sun  and  moon,  the  falling  of  the  stars. 
Surely  no  one  can  fail  to  agree  with  Sir 
Isaac    Newton    that   while  what    is  here 

3 


presented  Is  fact,  and  not  figure,  yet  the 
form  in  which  it  is  presented  is  figure  and 
not  fact.  And  so,  universally.  Whenever 
our  Lord  speaks  of  the  Last  Things,  He 
uses  not  the  language  of  literal  descrip- 
tion, but  draws  a  picture  in  which  facts 
are  represented  by  symbols.  Nor  is  this 
all.  It  is  a  principle  of  which  I  must  re- 
mind you  again  and  again,  that  the  picture 
which  our  Lord  draws  of  the  Last  Things 
is  without  perspective.  This  principle 
ought  always  to  be  kept  in  mind.  In 
weighing  the  subject  which  we  have  in 
hand,  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance.  The 
picture,  I  say,  which  our  Lord  draws  of 
the  last  things  is  not  only  a  picture  in 
which  facts  are  represented  by  symbols, 
but  it  is  a  picture  which  is  without  perspec- 
tive. It  seems  to  have  been  conceived, 
not  from  the  human  standpoint,  but  from 
the  Divine — from  the  standpoint  of  Him 
with  whom  there  is  no  future  and  no  past, 
but  only  an  eternal  now.  It  therefore 
makes  almost  nothing  of  distance  in  time. 

34 


The   near  and  the   remote   are   brought 
together  —  projected  upon    one  and  the 
same  plane — just  as  the  stars,  though  dif- 
fering in  distance  from  the  earth  by  mil- 
hons  on  milHons  of  miles,  appear  to  the  eye 
of  the  beholder  to  be  shining  side  by  side. 
By  the   operation  of  this  principle,   that 
which  was  to  happen  to  each  individual  of 
our  race  in  his  own  allotted  time,  is  repre- 
sented as  happening  to  all  together.     Each 
one,  as  he  passed  into  the  light  of  eternity, 
was  to  appear  (or  as  the  late  Revision  trans- 
lates more  accurately,  be  made  manifest) 
before  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ ;  there- 
fore, all  are  represented  as  standing  before 
the  judgment-seat  of  Christ  at  one  and  the 
same  time.     In  this  view,  the  last  day  of 
the  New  Testament  must  be  understood 
just  as  science  has  forced  us  to  understand 
each  one  of  theyfrj/  days  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament— as  a  period  of  indefinite  duration  ; 
the  judgment-day  of  Christ  extending  not 
simply  through  the  closing  four-and-twenty 
hours  of  earthly  history,  but  through  the 

35 


lapse  of  revolving  ages.  The  judgment, 
in  fact,  runs  parallel  with  the  kingdom  of 
Christ  and  stretches  on  throughout  the 
entire  period  of  the  Christian  dispensation. 
At  the  beginning  of  this  dispensation,  the 
trump  of  God — the  Gospel  call — began  to 
sound  among  the  nations ;  and  the  angels 
(or,  to  translate  literally,  the  messengers, 
the  ministers  of  Christ)  began  their  work 
of  gathering  together  the  elect  from  the 
four  winds — from  the  one  end  of  Heaven 
even  to  the  other.  That  trump  is  sound- 
ing still,  and  still  the  judgment  is  going 
on.  The  root-meaning  of  the  principal 
word,  or  rather  words,  tX2Ln'A2X^^  judgment, 
in  the  New  Testament  is  simply  that  of 
discernment,  distinction,  separation.  This 
distinction  is  not  to  be  arbitrary,  but  es- 
sential. The  judgment  is  not  to  make  it, 
but  make  it  known.  The  character  with 
which  a  man  dies  is  that  which  must  de- 
termine his  condition  after  death  ;  and  the 
judging  of  the  man  can  consist  in  nothing 
but  in  bringing  his  character  to  the  light. 
36 


The  view  in  question  would  change  no 
feature  of  the  faith  whatever.  It  would 
overthrow  no  fact — it  would  unsettle  no 
principle.  It  leaves  the  fact  of  a  general 
judgment  just  as  it  finds  it.  It  simply 
distinguishes  between  what  is  essential 
to  that  fact  and  what  is  figurative  in  its 
description.  It  simply  regards  the  judg- 
ment, as  St.  Paul  himself  regarded  it,  as 
consisting  in  manifestation  by  the  light. 
It  is  true  that  in  the  Epistle  for  the  day 
St.  Paul  connects  this  manifesting  light 
with  the  coming  of  the  Lord.  "Judge 
nothing,"  he  says,  "  before  the  time,  until 
the  Lord  come,  who  both  will  bring  to 
light  the  hidden  things  of  darkness,  and 
will  make  manifest  the  counsels  of  the 
hearts."  It  is  a  matter  in  which  Bible 
scholars  are  agreed,  that  the  first  Chris- 
tians— including  the  Apostles  themselves 
— looked  for  the  visible  reappearing  of 
the  Saviour  in  their  own  day.  They  had 
a  right  to  do  so.  They  could  not  have 
failed   to    do  so   without   giving  way  to 

37 


downright  unbelief.  The  Saviour  had 
promised  that  He  would  come  in  the  life- 
time of  the  then  existing  generation  ;  and 
that  promise  was  fulfilled.  It  was  ful- 
filled, but  not  in  the  manner  in  which  the 
first  Christians  expected  it.  The  word  in 
this  promise,  which  we  translate  coming, 
means  also  being  present.  I  am  glad  to 
see  that  the  late  Revision  so  explains  it  in 
the  margin.  Wherever,  and  in  whatever 
manner,  Christ  is  present,  there,  in  the 
sense  in  which  He  Himself  used  the  word, 
He  comes.  His  presence  in  power,  at  the 
overthrow  of  the  Jewish  state  and  polity, 
was  as  much  a  fulfilment  of  His  promise 
as  though  He  had  appeared  in  fleshly  form 
to  the  eyes  of  His  waiting  people.  Christ's 
coming  is  not  a  journey,  but  a  manifes- 
tation. To  whatsoever  soul  His  presence 
is  manifested,  whether  in  this  world,  or  in 
the  world  of  spirits,  to  that  soul  He  comes. 
He  will  come  to  us  when  we  go  to  Him.  It 
is  His  presence  that  makes  His  coming. 
In  that  presence  we  shall  stand  at  death  ; 
38 


and  the  light  of  that  presence  will  both 
bring  out  the  hidden  things  of  darkness, 
and  will  make  manifest  the  counsels  of  our 
hearts.  This  truth  is  a  very  solemn  one. 
It  is  unutterably  solemn,  when  we  come 
to  think  of  it. 

Here  in  this  world,  it  is  only  actual 
crimes,  and  gross  crimes  at  that,  that  are 
likely  to  be  made  known.  It  is  only  such 
sins  as  result  in  injury  to  others,  that  so- 
ciety is  interested  in  bringing  to  the  light. 
But  such  sins  are  comparatively  few.  By 
far  the  greater  number  of  our  sins  are 
those  which  we  feel  are  in  but  little  danger 
of  exposure,  and  which,  therefore,  we  com- 
mit with  but  little  sense  of  fear.  Take 
away  the  hope  of  concealment  for  sin — 
and  you  would  make  sinning  a  much  more 
serious  thing  for  most  persons  than  it  is. 
Suppose  it  to  be  the  established  order  that 
on  the  first  day  of  each  year,  every  man's 
record  for  the  past  year  should  be  re- 
vealed, that  every  scene  in  his  life  should 
be    photographed  —  every   word   spoken, 

39 


every  whisper  breathed  in  secret,  should 
be  echoed  in  tones  of  thunder — every 
thought,  every  wish,  every  feeHng,  of  the 
heart,  should  be  written  out  to  be  read 
and  known  of  all  men, — to  how  many  of 
us  would  the  first  day  of  the  coming  year 
be  a  day  of  rejoicing  ?  I  should  hope  that 
some  of  us  might  be  found  willing  to  face 
the  trial.  But  I  believe  that  many  of  us 
would  as  soon  go  into  annihilation.  I  be- 
lieve that  many  of  us  would  feel  like  call- 
ing on  the  rocks  and  mountains  to  hide  us 
from  our  shame.  This  case  is  imaginary  ; 
but  the  case  which  is  real  is  like  it.  Cer- 
tainly, it  is  not  one  whit  less  awful.  The 
disclosure  I  speak  of  may  not  be  made 
this  year  or  the  next ;  but  it  will  come  to 
you,  and  to  me,  and  to  all  of  us,  within  a 
few  years  at  the  remotest.  And  it  will  be 
none  the  less  hard  to  bear  in  the  world  to 
which  we  are  going  than  it  would  be  here. 
If  anything,  it  will  be  harder  to  bear. 
There  will  be  more  persons  there  to  wit- 
ness it  than  there  are  here.  Not  only  all 
40 


that  are  now  here  will  be  there  then,  but 
all   the    loved   ones    whose    memory   we 
cherish  and  whose  good  opinion  we  would 
rather  die  than  forfeit  will  be  there.     All 
men  will  be  there  that  have  ever  lived ; 
and   not  only  all  men,  but  all  the  holy 
angels  ;  and,  high  above  them  all,  the  dear 
Saviour — whose  insulted  gentleness  will, 
I  think,  be  the  hardest  thing  of  all  to  bear. 
This  case  is  no  mere  supposition.     It  is 
real.     Even  the  material  universe,  could 
we  trace  the  endless  intertwinings  of  the 
effects  produced  in  it — even  the  material 
universe,  as  the  photograph  and  the  phon- 
ograph help  us  to  conceive — registers  all 
the  deeds  we  do,  and  all  the  words  we 
utter.     But  there  is  another  register,  more 
plastic,  more  permanent,  and  more  legible 
than    this.     It    is   the   man  himself — the 
inner  man.     It  is  commonly  spoken  of  as 
the  soul.     I   prefer  to  speak  of  it  as  the 
spiritual  body.      I   hold  it  for  a  truth — it 
is    certainly  held    by   an    ever-increasing 
number   of   Christian    thinkers — that   we 

41 


have,  each  one  of  us,  a  spiritual  body  now, 
— invisible,  impalpable,  to  sense,  but  thor- 
oughly substantial, — that  this  spiritual 
body  is  all  the  while  being  moulded  into 
exact  correspondence  with  the  characters 
which  we  are  forming,  and  that  when,  at 
death,  these  earthy  masks  shall  fall,  it 
shall  stand  forth  in  the  spiritual  world  dis- 
closed, "  The  conception  of  the  spiritual 
body,"  says  an  eminent  clergyman  of  the 
Church  of  England,  "  is  one  which  is  in- 
timately connected  with  that  conception 
of  the  unseen  world  which  the  scientific 
intellect  of  the  present  day  is  embracing. 
.  .  .  Every  disturbance  —  every  dis- 
placement— which  takes  place  within  the 
visible  universe,  is  propagated  by  vibra- 
tions throughout  the  whole  system,  until 
it  finally  registers  itself  in  that  unseen 
world  from  which  the  seen  ultimately  de- 
rives its  energy.  All  this  is  taught  by 
living  masters  of  science.  And  more  than 
this.  They  teach  that  even  the  thoughts 
of  men,  attended  as  they  are  by  corre- 
42 


spending  quiverings  of  their  fleshly  frames, 
are  transmitted  in  hke  manner,  and  in  Hke 
manner  are  registered  " — registered  not 
only  in  the  brain,  thus  forming  the  basis 
of  what  is  called //^;)'i-2V^/ memory,  but  also 
in  the  spiritual  body,  thus  forming  the 
basis  of  eternal  memory.  This  is  a  very 
solemn  thought, — that  we  are  making  our 
own  eternity  here  in  time,  that  we  are 
every  moment  weaving  the  threads  of  the 
immortal  vesture  of  our  spirits,  that  the 
deeds  of  our  natural  bodies  perpetuate 
their  results  in  the  very  tissues  of  our 
spiritual  forms,  that  the  passions,  the  de- 
sires, the  loves,  the  hates,  that  we  daily 
cherish,  leave  an  ineffaceable  impress  upon 
all  within  us  that  is  deathless. 

Here  in  this  world  a  beautiful  exterior 
often  disguises  an  ugly  state  of  things 
within.  In  the  next  world  it  will  not  be 
so.  In  the  next  world  we  shall  be  attract- 
ive, or  repulsive,  according  to  the  charac- 
ters with  which  we  go  from  this.  I  am 
afraid    that    there     are    many    beautiful 

43 


persons  here  who  will  there  be  simply  hid- 
eous ;  even  here,  men  or  women  cannot 
long  be  bad  within,  without  showing  it 
outwardly  in  their  faces.  And  if  this  be 
true  of  a  substance  so  intractable  as  that 
of  the  natural  body,  it  is  easy  to  conceive 
that  the  plastic  substance  of  the  spiritual 
body  will  show  the  inner  man  with  abso- 
lute exactness.  Lucian,  in  one  of  his 
Dialogues  of  the  Dead,  says  that  whenever 
a  soul  comes  before  Rhadamanthus  to  be 
judged,  the  first  thing  done  is  to  have  it 
stripped  and  examined  ;  because  every  sin 
that  is  indulged  in  leaves  upon  the  soul  a 
characteristic  mark  by  which  the  sin  may 
be  known.  Lucian  was  not  a  Christian. 
He  was  a  Pagan.  But  in  this  passage  he 
certainly  hit  upon  one  of  the  most  solemn 
of  Christian  truths. 

And  yet  while  this  truth  is  solemn,  it 
has  an  aspect,  also,  which  is  most  encour- 
aging. Not  only  are  sins  self-registered 
within  us,  but  also  all  that  which  is  op- 
posed to  sin  —  every  heavenward  aspira- 
44 


tlon  —  every  holy  desire  —  every  loving 
deed  —  every  pure  and  noble  thought. 
Of  course,  that  which  will  show  in  our 
favor,  when  we  come  to  die,  will  be,  not 
what  we  actually  accomplished,  but  the 
motive  with  which  we  acted ;  and  the 
only  motive  that  will  avail  with  God  is 
the  simple  motive  of  love  —  the  love 
which  He  Himself  infuses.  I  believe 
that  in  the  lis^ht  of  love  the  sin-marks  of 
a  human  soul  will  more  and  more  fade 
out.  So,  at  least,  St.  Peter  would  seem 
to  teach  when  he  says  that  "  love "  (we 
call  it  charity)  "  shall  cover  the  multi- 
tude of  sins."  It  is  certain  that  love  is 
the  only  thing  that  saves.  It  is  certain 
that  love  is  the  only  thing  that  really 
ennobles.  It  is  certain  that  love  is  the 
only  thing  that  will  count  for  us  in  judg- 
ment. It  is  conceivable  that  one  may  do 
a  great  deal  of  work,  just  to  be  considered 
a  great  worker,  or  give  exceptionally  large 
sums  in  charity,  just  to  be  considered 
exceptionally  charitable.      Everything  of 

45 


this  sort  will  go  for  nothing.  A  dime 
given  out  of  a  kind  heart,  with  a  kind 
look,  and  a  few  gentle  words,  will  go  for 
more  in  the  judgment  than  ten  thousand 
dollars,  put  down  without  kindness,  upon 
a  public  subscription  paper.  Many  per- 
sons feel  it  a  great  disadvantage  that 
they  have  neither  means  nor  opportunity 
to  do  anything  noticeable  in  the  way  of 
good  works.  As  regards  the  good  of 
others  it  may  be  a  disadvantage,  but  it  is 
not  so  necessarily  as  regards  one's  self. 
God's  measure  is  not  our  measure.  In 
the  sight  of  God,  the  poor  widow  who 
cast  her  two  mites  into  the  treasury  did 
as  much  as  the  rich  young  ruler  would 
have  done  if  he  had  sold  his  all  and  given 
it  to  the  poor.  It  is  the  little  things  we 
do,  which,  just  because  they  are  little,  we 
are  not  tempted  to  feel  proud  of,  that  are 
the  most  likely  to  stand  the  light. 

Let  us,  then,  try  to  learn  this  lesson  :  to 
be  in  our  inmost  selves  what  we  would 
have  others  think  us ;  to  do  all  the  good, 
46 


kind,  loving  things  we  can,  and  to  do 
them  with  as  Httle  of  outward  show  as 
we  may,  and  with  an  eye  as  single  to  that 
day,  when,  standing  in  the  light,  we  shall 
be  brought  face  to  face  with  the  whole 
record  of  our  vanished  years 


47 


OUT-OF-CHURCH  RELIGION. 

Whether  therefore  ye  eat  or  drink,  or  whatsoever  ye  do, 
do  all  to  the  glory  of  God. — i  Cor.  x.  31. 

IT  is  no  uncommon  thing  to  hear  peo- 
*  pie  say  that  they  are  too  busy  to  be 
rehgious. 

Did  you  ever  think  what  it  is  that 
makes  it  possible  for  a  train  of  cars  to 
move  on  the  track  of  a  railroad  ?  You 
will  say,  perhaps,  "  Why,  of  course,  the 
power  of  the  steam  in  the  engine."  I 
think  not.  If  you  could  suppose  a  train 
of  cars  to  be  suspended  in  mid-air,  the 
power  of  ten  thousand  engines  could  not 
make  it  budge  an  inch.  There  would  be 
motion  of  the  wheels,  but  no  locomotion 
of  the  train.  You  have,  perhaps,  actually 
seen  an  engine  trying  to  start  on  a  frosty 
morning,  when  the  track  was  covered 
48 


with  a  thin  glare  of  ice  —  the  wheels  re- 
volving with  mad  rapidity,  but  the  engine 
remaining  stationary.  The  difficulty  was, 
not  that  there  was  any  lack  of  power  to 
move  the  wheels,  but  that  the  track  was 
too  smooth  for  the  wheels  to  "  take  hold." 
The  thing  wanting  was  not  power,  but 
fricHo7i. 

Did  you  ever  think,  again,  what  it  is 
that  makes  it  possible  for  a  bird  to  fly? 
Certainly  a  bird  could  not  fly  without 
wings,  but  then  wings  would  be  useless 
did  they  meet  in  their  stroke  with  no  re- 
sistance. It  is  the  resistance  of  the  air 
against  which  the  wings  are  beaten  that 
enables  a  bird  to  rise,  and  sustains  it  in 
its  course. 

Now,  what  the  friction  of  the  track  is  to 
the  motion  of  an  engine — what  the  resist- 
ance of  the  air  is  to  the  flying  of  a  bird — 
that,  the  duties,  the  cares,  the  trials,  the 
worries,  of  our  every-day  life  are  to  the 
heavenward  motion  of  the  soul.  It  is  these 
things    that    furnish    the    friction    which 

4 

49 


enables  the  soul  to  move  towards  its  pre- 
destined goal,  the  resistance  which  enables 
the  soul  to  soar  upwards,  and  get  ever 
nearer  and  nearer  God. 

The  Christian  life  is  a  life  of  continual 
overcoming ;  and,  of  course,  the  idea  of 
overcoming  without  conflict  is  an  absurd- 
ity. There  is  no  gaining  of  strength  for  the 
body  without  daily  trial  of  the  muscles ; 
and  there  is  no  gaining  of  strength  for  the 
soul  without  daily  trial  of  temper,  motive, 
principle.  But  in  those  duties  which  we 
are  too  apt  to  think  of  as  exclusively  re- 
ligious, there  is  no  trial  at  all — of  temper, 
motive,  principle,  or  anything  else.  There 
is  no  particular  trial  in  coming  to  church, 
and  saying  prayers,  and  singing  hymns, 
and  listening  to  not  very  long  sermons.  It 
is  not  here  that  the  soul  finds  the  friction 
which  enables  it  to  move  ;  it  is  here  that 
the  soul  finds,  or  should  find,  simply  its 
motive  power.  It  is  not  here  that  the  soul 
finds  the  resistance  which  bears  it  upward  ; 
it  is  here  that  the  soul  gathers,  or  should 

50 


gather,  simply  its  strength  of  wing.  We 
speak,  indeed,  of  Divine  worship  as  Divine 
service, — as,  when  I  said,  this  morning,  that 
there  would  be  Divine  service  here  in  the 
church  this  evening.  And  in  one  sense 
Divine  worship  is  Divine  service  ;  but  it  is 
not  that  in  the  sense  of  religious  work. 
Worship  is  to  the  soul  what  eating  and 
drinking  are  to  the  body ;  and  we  do  not 
speak  of  eating  and  drinking  as  work. 
We  eat  and  drink,  rather,  that  we  may  be 
strengthened  for  work.  Just  so  it  is  as 
regards  worship.  We  worship  God  that 
we  may  get  strength  from  Him  to  do  our 
work  in  life  religiously.  But  that  work  is 
not  here  in  the  church  ;  it  is  at  home, 
amid  the  nameless  worries  of  those  noisy 
children,  in  the  shop,  the  office,  the  field. 
Wherever  your  daily  occupation  is,  wher- 
ever your  daily  trials  are,  there  is  your  re- 
ligious work. 

If   religion    consisted    in    praying    and 
singing,  and  feeling  good,  then,   I  grant 
you,  the  time  devoted  to  the  every-day 
51 


duties  and  drudgeries  of  life  would  be  so 
much  time  lost.      But  as  religion  consists, 
in  fact,  not  simply  in  acts  or  emotions, 
but   in  character, — in  being  loving,   and 
pure,  and  patient,  and  honest,  and  truthful, 
— I  can  conceive  of  nothing  more  favor- 
able to  the  best  religious  culture  than  a 
life    filled   to    overflowing   with  the  very 
commonest  of  duties  and  cares.     We  need 
not  be  thinking  all  the  time  about  Heaven 
— its  golden  harps,  its  shining  robes,  its 
glittering  crowns — to  be  all  the  time  get- 
ting nearer  Heaven.     Not  that  we  should 
make  it  an  aim  to  shut  out  Heaven  from 
our  thoughts.     Far — very  far — from  that. 
As    followers    of    Him  who  endured  the 
cross    "  for   the   joy   that  was  set  before 
Him,"  we  ought  to  think,  and  often  think, 
of  that  time,  so  soon  to  come,  when  these 
earthy  masks  shall  fall,  and  the  spirit  look 
with  cleansed  and  open  vision  upon  the 
glory  to  be  revealed.     But  merely  to  think 
of  the  life  to  come  can  serve  no  purpose. 
To  sit  at  home  and  dwell  with  rapture  on 

52 


the  beauty  of  Italian  skies, — the  glories  of 
Italian  art, — this  can  never  take  one  to 
Italy.  Nothing  can  but  travel.  And 
nothing  but  travel  —  spirit-travel  —  can 
take  one  to  Heaven.  The  way  to  Heaven 
is  represented  as  a  pilgrimage ;  and  this 
pilgrimage  includes  far  more  than  the 
crossing  of  that  mysterious  boundary 
which  men  call  death.  Our  pilgrimage  is 
one  with  our  entire  probation.  Death 
marks,  not  its  beginning,  but  its  close. 
The  pilgrim  path  must  day  by  day  be 
trodden  here  on  earth.  The  Heavenward 
traveller  must  journey  upward  to  the  Ever- 
lasting Gates  with  feet  that  are  still  tread- 
ing the  dust.  How  we  walk  the  earth — 
that  will  decide  the  question  where  we 
shall  find  ourselves  when  we  leave  the 
earth  ;  that,  and  not  the  feelings  which  we 
may  have  when  we  come  to  die. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  such  or  such 
a  religion  is  good  enough  to  live  by,  but 
a  poor  religion  to  die  by.  If  to  die  com- 
fortably were   the  main    thing,   I    would 

53 


rather  say  that  any  religion  is  good 
enough  to  die  by,  but  only  that  religion 
which  is  true  is  good  enough  to  live  by. 
Only  that  religion  which  is  true  can  make 
a  true  character  —  full,  rounded  out,  sym- 
metrical ;  but  any  religion  that  is  em- 
braced sincerely  may  bring  comfort  to 
the  dying  hour.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
Roman  Catholic  and  the  Protestant, 
the  Trinitarian  and  the  Unitarian,  die 
with  equal  confidence ;  and  the  Mahom- 
etan, in  the  East,  and  the  Pagan  Indian, 
in  the  West,  meet  death  with  as  little 
fear  as  Christians  of  whatever  name. 

Now  I  do  not  say  that  persons  consci- 
entiously embracing  any  of  these  religions 
must  be  or  will  be  condemned  in  the 
judgment  of  God.  God  forbid.  But  I 
say  that  the  facts  just  cited  prove,  not 
that  all  religions  are  equally  true,  or 
equally  good,  but  that  any  religion  —  true 
or  false,  good  or  bad  —  if  honestly  be- 
lieved in,  and  honestly  lived  by,  may 
bring  comfort  in  the  dying  hour.  But 
54 


this  is  not  what  the  religion  of  Christ 
proposes.  It  proposes,  not  a  "scheme" 
to  make  death  easy,  but  a  power  —  an  in- 
fluence —  an  inspiration  —  to  make  Hfe 
holy.  It  proposes  to  save  us  not  directly 
from  any  penalty  in  the  unknown  future, 
but  from  our  present  selfishness.  It  pro- 
poses to  enable  men  to  live  righteously 
in  the  present  world  as  the  only  way  of 
fitting  them  to  live  happily  in  the  world 
to  come.  This,  indeed,  is  the  pre-eminent 
thing  in  Christ's  religion  —  that  it  aims 
to  get  men  to  live  to  the  glory  of  God 
here,  and  not  simply  to  escape  the  wrath 
of  God  hereafter — that  it  aims  to  save 
men,  not  from  God,  but  to  Him.  Doubt- 
less it  points  to  heavenly  rewards,  but  it 
holds  out  no  other  hope  of  reaching  them 
than  simply  that  which  rests  upon  the 
faithful  discharge  of  earthly  duties.  And 
this  is  not  more  scriptural  than  it  is  rea- 
sonable. 

"  If,"  says  Robertson,   "  the  caterpillar 
should   forget   to    feed   upon  the   leaves 
55 


necessary  to  its  caterpillar  state,  and 
should  spend  its  time  in  dreaming  of  the 
day  when  it  should  be  a  beautiful  butter- 
fly, and  float  away,  like  a  winged  blossom, 
upon  the  air,  it  would  never  be  a  beauti- 
ful butterfly  at  all,  but  would  die  an  ugly 
caterpillar."     It  is  so  with  us. 

"Three  sailors,"  says  another,  "stepped 
into  a  boat  to  cross  a  river.  Two  took 
the  oars,  and,  as  is  usual,  turned  their 
faces  towards  the  shore  which  they  were 
leaving.  The  third  took  the  helm,  and 
stood  with  his  face  towards  the  shore 
whither  they  were  bound.  *  Behold,'  ex- 
claimed one  standing  by,  'what  may  re- 
mind us  of  our  own  condition.  Life  is  a 
mighty  river,  flowing  into  the  ocean  of 
eternity.  Upon  it  we  are  all  afloat  — 
each  in  the  boat  of  his  vocation.  Like 
these  sailors,  therefore,  we  ought  to  turn 
our  faces  to  the  world  that  we  are  leav- 
ing, and  put  our  confidence  in  God,  who 
stands  at  the  helm,  that  He  will  steer  to 
where  happiness  awaits  us.  We  should 
S6 


smile  were  these  men  to  turn  around  and 
pretend  that  they  could  not  row  unless 
their  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  place 
to  which  their  course  is  tending ;  and  not 
less  foolish  would  it  be  in  us  to  dwell  so 
much  upon  the  blessedness  of  the  world 
to  come  as  to  forget  the  humble  and  nar- 
row path  of  duty  which  leads  to  it 
throuorh  the  world  that  is.' " 

In  this  illustration  is  gathered  up  the 
teaching  of  this  whole  sermon. 

The  grand  secret  of  getting  on  in  the 
spiritual  life,  is,  always  to  be  true  to  the 
present  hour  —  be  its  duties  great  or  lit- 
tle. Great  duties  are  never  to  be  waited 
for.  They  are  never  even  to  be  wished 
for ;  they  are  not  needed  for  our  disci- 
pline. And,  besides,  they  come  to  any  of 
us  too  seldom  to  have  much  to  do  with 
our  discipline.  But  the  little  duties  that 
crowd  one's  path  at  every  step  —  it  is 
these  that  really  give  shape  to  character. 
And  they  are  giving  shape  to  character 
every  day  and  every  hour.     Upon   how 

57 


we  meet  these  duties  all  depends  —  all, 
really,  that  is  worth  living  for  here  in 
time  —  all,  certainly,  that  any  one  will 
care  for  when  time  shall  be  no  more. 


58 


THE  ATONEMENT. 

By  his  own   blood   he  entered  once  into  the  holy  place, 
having  obtained  eternal  redemption  for  us. — Heb.  ix.  I2. 

THIS  is  Passion-Sunday,  or  the  Second 
Sunday  before  Easter  ;  and  the  text 
is  taken  from  the  Epistle  for  the  day. 
The  subject  that  it  introduces  is  what  is, 
comprehensively,  called  the  Atonement. 

This  word  "  atonement  "  (important  in 
Christian  theology  as  is  the  doctrine  for 
which  it  stands)  is  to  be  found  but  once 
in  what  we  call  our  authorized  version. 
It  was  earlier  to  be  found  in  Tyn- 
dale's  translation — from  which  it  seems 
to  have  been  borrowed  by  King  James's 
translators.  By  Tyndale  himself  it  was 
probably  pronounced  At-one-ment.  Cer- 
tainly At-one-ment  was  what  Tyndale  un- 
derstood it  to  mean.  In  the  Canterbury 
Revision — the  revision  of  1881,  which  is 
59 


supposed  to  represent  the  scholarship  of 
the  age — "  atonement  "  does  not  appear 
even  once,  but  instead  of  it,  we  have  "rec- 
onciliation." The  two  words  are  exactly 
equivalent  in  meaning. 

Reconciliation  means,  of  course,  peace 
between  parties  (to  use  the  legal  term  for 
it)  who  were  before  at  variance.  In  the 
case  of  the  reconciliation  to  be  brought 
about  by  Christ,  there  was,  strictly,  but 
one  party  to  be  reconciled.  God  was  not 
at  variance  with  man.  It  was  only  man 
that  was  at  variance  with  God.  We  are 
nowhere  told  that  Christ  came  to  recon- 
cile God  to  the  world  ;  but  we  are  told 
distinctly  that  God  was  in  Christ,  recon- 
ciling the  world  to  Himself.  But  "  recon- 
ciliation" is  only  one  word  that,  in  this 
connection,  the  New  Testament  makes 
use  of.  We  have  also  the  word  ''sacri- 
ficed The  heathen  meaning  of  the  word 
"  sacrifice  "  is  something  offered  to  appease 
an  offended  deity.  I  do  not  deny  that 
this  meaning  found  lodgment  also  in  the 
60 


popular  mind  of  the  Jewish  people.  It 
was  not  unnatural  that  it  should.  But,  in 
the  distinctively  Christian  use  of  the  word, 
no  such  meaning  has  any  place.  So  far 
was  God  from  requiring  the  death  of  His 
Son  before  He  could  love  the  world  that, 
as  we  are  told  expressly,  He  so  loved 
the  world  that  He  gave  His  Son  to  die 
for  it.  God  certainly  did  not  need  any 
sacrifice  from  man  to  Him;  but,  just  as 
certainly,  there  was  the  greatest  possible 
need  for  the  greatest  possible  sacrifice 
from  Him  to  man. 

But,  you  may  ask,  does  not  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ  mean  that  Christ  suffered  for 
us?  Most  certainly  it  does  mean  that. 
Most  certainly  Christ  did  suffer  for  us  ; 
but  that  is  not  the  same  as  saying  that  He 
suffered  instead  of  us.  For  the  innocent 
to  bear  voluntary  suffering  in  order  to  re- 
claim the  guilty,  is  divine.  To  inflict 
punishment,  due  the  guilty,  upon  the  inno- 
cent— no  matter  how  willing  the  innocent 
might  be  to  bear  it — would  be  less  than 
6i 


human.  Why  was  it,  then,  that  Christ 
suffered  ?  It  was  not,  I  have  said  already, 
to  appease  the  wrath  of  God.  Was  it  to 
show  how  much  God  loved  man,  and  thus 
to  get  man  to  love  God  in  return  ?  It 
would  be  safe,  I  think,  to  say  that  this 
was  one  object  of  our  Lord's  sufferings — 
an  object  of  which  we  could  hardly  make 
too  much,  unless  we  were  to  make  it  the 
only  object ;  for  it  was  not  the  only  ob- 
ject. There  was  another.  To  find  out 
what  that  other  object  was,  we  must,  at 
this  point,  drop  the  term  ''sacrifice^'  and 
take  up  the  term  "  redemption^  The  idea 
of  redemption  is  that  of  a  buying  back,  a 
ransoming  from  bondage.  As  to  who  was 
the  Ransomer,  there  has  never  been  any 
question  :  it  was  Christ.  As  to  who  was 
the  ransomed,  there  has  never  been  any 
question  :  it  was  man.  As  to  what  was 
the  ransom-price,  there  has  never  been 
any  question  :  it  was  the  whole  sacrifice 
of  Christ — a  sacrifice  which  began  in  the 
manger,  and  was  finished  on  the  cross. 
62 


But  to  whom  the  ransom-price  was  paid — 
as  to  this  point  there  has  been  question 
almost  from  the  beginning.  Iranceus,  in 
the  last  years  of  the  second  century,  took 
up  this  question,  and  decided  for  himself 
that  the  ransom-price  was  paid  to  the 
devil.  And  this  opinion  of  his  was  the 
orthodox  opinion  in  the  Church  down  to 
the  time  of  Anselm — that  is  to  say,  a 
period  of  nearly  a  thousand  years.  This 
shows  how  much  the  authority  of  estab- 
lished opinion  in  the  Church  may  be 
worth.  It  was  succeeded  by  various 
modifications,  one  after  another,  of  the 
theory  that  the  ransom-price  was  paid  to 
Divine  justice.  It  is  quite  the  fashion 
now,  in  certain  quarters  of  the  Church,  to 
make  light  of  this  theory.  For  my  own 
part,  I  do  not  see  why.  I  do  not  see  that 
it  is  a  thinor  to  be  made  liafht  of.      It  seems 

o  o 

to  me,  rather,  an  imperfect  sort  of  effort 
towards  explaining  one  of  theprofoundest 
and  most  unquestionable  of  truths.  The 
chief  ground  of  objection  to  it  is  the  way 

63 


of  putting  it.  It  is  put  in  the  language  of 
forensic  theology.  Translate  it  into  the 
language  of  modern  thought,  and  it  takes 
on  a  different  look.  Translate  it  into  the 
language  of  modern  thought,  and  Divine 
justice  means  simply  the  Divine  law  of 
man's  nature.  That  man  had  transgressed 
the  law  of  his  nature  was  simply  a  fact. 
That  the  effect  of  transgressing  the  law 
of  his  nature  was  to  work  in  his  nature  an 
inability  to  keep  the  law — this  was  simply 
another  fact.  It  was  a  fact  which,  in  one 
form  of  statement  or  another,  all  men  ad- 
mit. In  the  New  Testament,  this  in- 
ability is  spoken  of  as  "  corruption."  It  was 
to  such  corruption  that  man  was  in  bond- 
age. It  was  from  such  corruption  that 
man  needed  a  deliverer.  Had  it  been 
possible  for  man  to  sin  without  corrupting 
his  nature,  mere  repentance  for  the  sin 
would  doubtless  have  been  enough.  But 
such  was  not  the  case.  It  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  been.  Transgression  in  the 
will  wrought  corruption  in  the  nature  by 
64 


a  rigid  necessity.     To  heal  himself  of  such 
corruption,  by  effort  of  his  own,  was  some- 
thing that  man  himself  could   never  do. 
To    suppose    that   he  could — to  suppose 
that   he   could  change  his  nature  simply 
throueh  the  enereies  of  that  same  nature 
— would  be  to  suppose  that  an  effect  could 
be  its  own  cause.      Here,  then,  I  say,  was 
a  work  that  man  could  not  do.      It  was  a 
work  at  the  same  time  that  God  could  not 
do  for  man — that  is,  directly  ;  for,  if  He 
could,  it  must  have  been  by  compulsion  ; 
and  compulsion   and  moral   freedom  are 
things  utterly  incompatible.     Not  all  the 
omnipotence  that  made  the  worlds  could 
have  removed  a  single  stain  of  the  cor- 
ruption of  man's  nature.     It  was  a  work 
that  could  not  have  been  done  from  with- 
out man.     It  had  to  be  done,  if  done  at 
all,  from  within  him.     It  had  to  be  done 
through  the  operation  of  the  human  will. 
That  in  this  way  it  might  be  done,  the 
Son  of  God  Himself  became  man.     He 
descended  into  the  whole  human  condition. 


5 

65 


This  is  what  we  mean,  or  ought  to  mean, 
when  we  say  that  He  took  our  nature 
upon  Him.  Our  nature  is  but  one.  Our 
different  individuaHties  are  multitudinous  ; 
but  our  nature  is  but  one.  In  each  man 
it  is  entire,  but  among  all  men  it  is  not 
divided.  The  Son  of  God,  therefore,  in 
taking  our  nature  upon  Him,  literally 
took  upon  Him  the  nature  of  the  whole 
race.  He  took  it  upon  Him  without  sin 
in  His  way  of  taking  it,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  with  all  its  imperfections — with  all 
its  sin-born  infirmities  still  clinging  to  it. 
Do  you  say.  No  ?  Do  you  deny  that  there 
ever  was  a  time  when  the  man  Christ 
Jesus  was  not  perfect?  Is  it  not  written, 
let  me  ask,  that  He  increased  in  wisdom? 
Was  He  perfect  in  wisdom  before  He 
increased  in  it?  Is  it  not  written  that  He 
increased  in  favor,  and  that,  not  only  with 
man,  but  with  God  ?  Upon  what  was  this 
based — this  increase  in  favor  with  God 
and  man  ?  Is  it  not  written,  again,  that, 
though  He  were  a  Son,  yet  had  He  to, 
66 


learn  obedience  by  the  things  which  He 
suffered?  Why  had  He  to  learn  obe- 
dience? From  first  to  last,  indeed,  He 
was  without  sin.  In  this  we  must  all 
agree.  But  sinlessness,  except  in  a  purely 
negative  sense,  is  not  perfection,  and  car- 
ries with  it  no  such  implication  as  per- 
fectness.  The  truth  clearly  is,  that  the 
Son  of  God  took  our  nature  upon  Him, 
not  as  already  perfect,  but  simply  to  make 
it  perfect — to  undo,  by  suffering  in  our  na- 
ture, the  whole  evil  work  that  sin,  by  indul- 
gence, had  inflicted  upon  it.  "  Through 
sufferings,"  says  an  Apostle,  "He  was 
made  perfect,"  and  "  being  made  perfect," 
says  the  same  apostle,  "He  became  the 
author  of  eternal  salvation  unto  all  that 
obey  Him." 

But  how  could  this  be  ?  How  could 
the  making  of  our  nature  perfect  in  Christ 
save  us?  If  we  think  for  ourselves,  I 
know  of  but  one  answer  that  we  can  (jive  : 
it  did  not  save  us.  It  certainly  did  not 
save  us.  It  could  not  save  us.  But  there 
67 


was  one  thing  that  it  did.  Inasmuch  as 
our  whole  nature  was  in  Christ,  our  whole 
nature  was  in  Him  redeemed — i.e.,  made 
perfect.  That  He  did  ;  but,  apart  from 
His  teaching,  that  was  all.  That  was 
His  work.  It  was  His  whole  work.  Re- 
demption does  not  mean  salvation.  Re- 
demption affects  simply  the  common 
nature.  But  in  every  man  there  is,  be- 
sides the  common  nature,  a  particular 
person  ;  and  salvation  is  something  that 
affects  the  person.  Our  whole  nature  was 
redeemed  in  Christ ;  but  it  was  redeemed 
only  as  connected  with  His  own  single 
person.  In  order  that  we  might  share  per- 
sonally in  our  Lord's  redeeming  work, 
something  more  was  needed.  It  was  need- 
ed that  there  should  be  a  living  union 
between  our  individual  persons  and  our 
common  nature  as  it  was,  and  is,  in  Christ, 
and  such  living  union  is  possible  only  on 
the  condition  that  one  and  the  same  Spirit 
dwell  at  one  and  the  same  time  in  the 
Saviour  and  the  sinner — so  joining  the 
68 


two  together,  of  the  twain  making  one. 
This  is  the  whole  sum  of  the  Scripture 
theology  of  the  Atonement,  as  I  am  able 
to  understand  it. 

I  have  now  explained,  or  tried  to  ex- 
plain, four  of  the  New  Testament  terms 
that  are  used  in  connection  with  the 
Atonement.  But  these  do  not  exhaust 
the  list. 

Another  such  term  is  ''propitiation  " — a 
term  whose  theological  equivalent  is  '"satis- 
faction." If  any  one  should  conclude  from 
what  I  have  now  been  saying  that  I  do  not 
believe  in  the  Divine  requirement  of  satis- 
faction, he  would,  in  that,  be  wrong,  I 
believe  in  it.  But  as  to  what  the  satis- 
faction is  that  God  requires — it  is  quite 
possible  that  he  and  I  might  differ.  He 
mieht  believe  that  when  sin  has  been  com- 
mitted,  God  requires  that  His  own  holi- 
ness be  vindicated  by  the  punishment  of 
the  sinner — or,  if  not  of  the  sinner,  of 
some  one  willing  to  take  the  place  of  the 
sinner.  I  certainly  believe  nothing  of  the 
69 


kind.  I  cannot  believe  that  God  is  so 
poorly  off  in  character  as  to  need  any  such 
vindication.  Sin  means  wanderinQ^  from 
God ;  and  the  satisfaction  that  God  re- 
quires is  that  we  return  to  Him.  This  is 
the  only  satisfaction  that  God  requires. 
The  Divine  love  cannot  be  satisfied  by 
punishment.  Punishment  is,  in  no  sense, 
an  alternative  satisfaction  to  obedience. 
Punishment  simply  proclaims  that  the 
Divine  law  is  not  satisfied.  It  is  simply  a 
consequence  of  sin,  whose  purpose  is  to 
lead  the  sinner  to  make  the  true  satisfaction 
that  the  law  demands — i.e.,  to  set  himself 
right  with  God  ;  and  Christ  is  said  to  be 
our  propitiation  for  the  reason  that  it  is 
through  Him  only  that  this  can  be  accom- 
plished— for  this  reason,  and  no  other. 

There  yet  remains  one  term  to  be 
noticed,  and  that  is  "  blood" — the  blood  of 
Christ.  This  term,  in  its  various  connec- 
tions, is  thought  by  many  to  make  strongly 
in  favor  of  that  vindicatory  view  of  the 
Atonement  that  I  have  been  denouncing, 
70 


I  think  that  it  makes,  in  fact,  in  just  the 
opposite  direction.     When   the  blood  of 
Christ  is  spoken  of  it  is  not,  of  course, 
His  literal,  physical  blood,  that  is  meant. 
The  word  is  here  used  by  way  of  symbol, 
just  as  it  is  when  we  say  that  the  blood  of 
the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  Church — 
meaning   their    self-devotion,    their    con- 
stancy even  unto  death.     The  blood  of 
Christ  means  His  whole  life  and  death  of 
suffering.     But  what  is  it  that  the  blood 
of    Christ   is  said   to    accomplish?     The 
vindication  of  God's  holiness?     Nothing 
of  the   kind.     Its  whole  work  is  spoken 
of  as  bearing  upon  the  human  conscience. 
The  sacrifices  under  the  law  could  not — 
so  an  Apostle  tells   us — make   him  that 
did  the  service  perfect  as  pertaining  to  the 
conscience,  but  the  blood  of  Christ— the 
same    writer    goes    on    to    say  —  purges 
the  conscience  from  dead  works  to  serve 
the  living  God.     And  the  reason  is  plain. 
It  was  by  the  blood  of  Christ — it  was  by 
His   suffering   life   and  death— that   our 


71 


nature  was  redeemed — i.  e.,  was  made  per- 
fect. It  was  therefore  by  the  blood  of 
Christ  that  a  way  was  laid  open  for  sin- 
ful men  to  get  away  from  themselves — 
to  be  able  to  disown  themselves — to  be 
morally  as  free  from  their  whole  past  as  if 
they  had  literally  died  and  literally  been 
born  again. 

This  completes  our  review  of  the  Atone- 
ment. The  Atonement,  let  me  add,  is  a 
work  intended  to  effect,  not  any  change  in 
God,  but  a  great  and  blessed  change  in 
men.  This  change  the  Atonement  does 
not  necessarily  make  for  any  man  ;  but  for 
every  man  it  makes  it  possible.  It  is  a 
change  that  can  be  actual  only  on  the 
condition  that  we  ourselves  consent  to  it. 
The  reconciliation  of  man  to  God  cannot 
be  brought  about  by  force.  We  may,  if 
we  will,  resist  the  Spirit's  drawings.  This 
is  our  responsibility.  It  is  a  responsibility 
affixed  to  the  fact  of  our  being  men.  It 
is,  beyond  all  comparison,  the  greatest 
and  the  most  awful  responsibility  of  life. 
72 


We  may,  if  we  will,  resist  the  Spirit's 
drawings.  And  if  we  do — disownincr  thus 
all  personal  interest  in  the  redemption 
wrought  in  and  for  our  nature — are  we 
ready  to  face  the  consequences  ? 

Remember,  the  dream  of  life  will  soon 
be  over,  and  the  time  for  answering  this 
question,  to  any  purpose,  will  not  be  then  : 
that  time  is  7iow. 


73 


LOVE 

He  that  loveth  not,  knoweth  not  God  :  for  God  is  Love. — 
I  St.  John  iv.  8 

f  REMEMBER  a  friend's  once  putting 
to  me  this  question  :  "  What  do  you 
mean  when  you  speak  of  loving  God  ? " 
He  went  on  to  say  that  he  had  some  time 
before  put  the  same  question  to  another 
— one  who  had  thought  much  about  such 
matters — and  that  the  answer  he  had  re- 
ceived was,  in  substance,  this  :  Love  to 
God  is  something  of  which  man  cannot 
be  conscious — something  which  we  can 
know,  not  by  feeling  it  in  our  hearts,  as 
man  feels  love  to  man,  but  only  by  the 
conformity  which  we  observe  in  our  wills 
to  the  will  of  God.  I  at  once  dissented 
from  this  view,  giving  my  reasons  why. 
I  did,  and  do,  dissent  from  it  because,  for 
one  thing,  it  is   unscriptural.      Love,   ac- 

74 


cording  to  the  view  in  question,  would  be 
reduced  to  mere  obedience ;  whereas  the 
Scriptures  distinguish  broadly  between 
the  two  —  making  obedience  to  spring 
from  love  as  its  motive,  a  motive  whose 
presence  in  the  soul  is  not  gathered  by 
way  of  inference,  but  felt — felt  as  a  con- 
straining power — felt  as  a  Heavenward 
drawing — felt  as  longing  and  desire. 

I  did,  and  do,  dissent  from  that  view 
because,  for  another  thing,  it  is  contrary 
to  the  whole  tenor  of  Christian  experi- 
ence. There  is  a  something  which  in 
every  age  has  filled  the  hearts  of  men 
with  a  strange,  unearthly  joy,  lifting  them 
above  the  temptations  and  disquietudes 
of  the  world,  transforming  sorrow  and 
privation  and  pain  into  ministries  of  bless- 
ing. There  is  a  something  possible  to 
the  human  heart  so  strong  that  it  has 
hushed  the  cries  of  agony  and  wakened 
songs  of  peace  amid  the  flames  of  martyr- 
dom. There  is  a  something  which  with 
thousands,  I  believe,  to-day,  is  felt  to  be 
75 


better  than  life — something  for  which  men 
in  abject  poverty  would  not  accept  the 
riches  of  the  world,  which  sufferers, 
racked  with  pain,  would  not  exchange  for 
ease,  which  mourners  in  their  grief  would 
not  give  up  to  call  their  loved  ones  from 
the  grave.  This  something,  those  who 
have  felt  it  have  believed  to  be  the  love 
of  God.  They  have  believed  this  with 
perfect  confidence.  Has  all  this  uniform 
experience  been  self-deception  ?  Why 
should  it  so  be  thought  of?  "  Why,"  says 
one,  "  simply  because  I  cannot  conceive 
how  it  is  possible  to  love  God — to  love 
Him,  I  mean,  in  the  same  conscious  way 
that  we  love  parents  or  children  or  friends. 
I  cannot  conceive  how  it  is  possible  to 
love  one  whom  we  have  never  seen,  and 
of  whom  we  cannot  even  form  the  faint- 
est conception.  The  Bible  tells  us  that 
God  is  Love,  and  Justice,  and  Holiness, 
and  Truth  ;  but  these  are  only  attributes. 
Try  to  put  them  together,  and  construct 
to  your  imagination  a  person  out  of  them 
76 


— a  person  without  parts  or  passions,  with- 
out form  or  dimensions,  without  location 
in  space  or  beginning  or  ending  in  time 
—  you  cannot  do  it.  All  that  you  know 
about  God  is  a  catalogue  of  abstractions  ; 
to  love  it  with  a  genuine  heart-love,  with 
a  love  that  is  warm  and  thrilling — is  just 
impossible."  All  this  some  one  may  say. 
I  concede  the  difficulty  thus  presented  ;  I 
concede  it  in  its  fullest  force.  I  concede 
that  unless  we  can  realize  that  God  is  a 
person,  as  truly  a  person  as  any  one  of  us, 
— a  person,  too,  with  whom  we  ourselves 
are  directly  dealing, —  we  cannot  love 
Him.  But  how  is  this  point  to  be 
achieved  ?  By  some  force  of  the  intel- 
lect? I  have  just  admitted  that  to  be 
impossible.  We  may,  indeed,  reason  that 
the  universe  exhibits  marks  of  design,  and 
that  design  implies  thought,  and  thought 
a  person  thinking.  But  this  process,  after 
all,  gives  us  not  the  living  intuition  of 
God's  person  ;  it  simply  gives  us  ground 
in  logic  for  believing  that  God  is  personal. 

77 


For  a  better  process,  I  must  appeal  to 
your  own  experience,  an  appeal  without 
which,  in  such  an  argument  as  this,  all  the 
libraries  of  theology  count  for  nothing. 
You  remember  the  time  when  the  con- 
sciousness of  sin  came  to  your  soul  like 
an  avenging  spectre.  It  may  have  been 
some  one  sin  of  peculiar  enormity,  or  it 
may  have  been  your  whole  spiritual  con- 
dition ;  but  in  view  of  it  you  felt  wretched, 
undone — every  refuge  of  lies  cut  off — the 
pitiless  storms  of  self-accusation  beating 
you  down  to  the  dust.  In  that  hour  your 
sense  of  responsibility  was  something  ter- 
rible. To  whom  or  to  what  did  you  feel 
responsible  ?  To  society  ?  To  your  fel- 
low -  man  ?  To  blind,  impersonal  law  ? 
To  a  collection  of  moral  abstractions  ?  It 
could  be  no  abstraction.  You  could,  in- 
deed, not  give  it  shape  or  feature.  You 
could  no  more  then  than  you  can  now 
bring  God  within  the  bounds  of  your  con- 
ception. You  could  no  more  then  than 
you  can  now  construct  God's  person  out 

78 


of  His  attributes.  No  attempt  of  the 
kind  was  thought  of.  No  attempt  of  the 
kind  was  needed.  The  case  was  too  clear 
for  speculation.  There  you  stood  face  to  , 
face  with  God — and  you  knew  it.  God  V 
was  as  real  to  your  convictions  as  the 
judge  upon  the  bench  is  real  to  the  crim- 
inal at  the  bar.  It  is  always  so.  Speak- 
ing in  general,  the  practical  sense  of 
God's  personality  is  given  us  in  whatever 
powerfully  appeals  to  the  moral  nature,  in 
whatever  rouses  the  sense  of  moral  re- 
sponsibility. Speaking  in  particular,  it  is 
given  us  in  the  deep-felt  conviction  of  sin. 
Such  a  conviction  is,  as  a  rule,  the  first  step 
of  a  sinful  man  towards  loving  God.  But 
it  is  only  one  step.  The  criminal  does 
not  love  the  judge  simply  because  he  feels 
he  is  in  the  judge's  power.  He  may  fear 
him,  he  may  tremble  at  his  very  look,  but 
that  is  not  to  love  him.  A  guilty  soul's 
mere  sense  of  responsibility  to  God  would 
be  as  likely  to  lead  that  soul  to  despair  of 
God's  mercy  as  to  rely  upon  His  love. 
79 


Another  step,  then,  is  needful.  The  next 
thing  to  reahze,  after  God's  personaHty, 
is  His  nature — or,  as  we  should  say.  His 
disposition.  Is  God  really  loving  ?  Is 
He  really  merciful  ?  Or  is  He  only  just  ? 
Whither  shall  we  turn  for  answer  ?  Do 
you  say,  "  To  Providence  ?  "  But  what 
then  do  you  make  of  the  crimes  with 
which  almost  every  page  of  history  is 
stained?  —  the  oppressions  of  sceptred 
might,  the  tortures  of  persecution,  the 
butcheries  of  war  ?  Do  you  say,  "  To 
nature  ? "  But  what  then  do  you  make 
of  the  earthquakes,  the  tornadoes,  the 
blight  of  harvests,  the  pestilences  pouring 
death  into  the  lungs  of  helpless  millions  ? 
The  truth  is,  both  nature  and  Providence 
are  full  of  seeming  contradictions.  In  the 
light  of  neither  can  the  question  concern- 
ing the  nature — the  disposition — of  God 
be  settled.  It  can  be  settled  only  in  the 
light  of  that  great  factor  which  alone  sup- 
plies the  key  to  the  drama  of  human  his- 
tory—  that  supreme,  that  central  fact, 
80 


around  which  all  revelation  gathers — the 
Cross  of  the  Redeemer.  This  is,  to  those 
who  accept  it,  demonstration  perfect — 
and  there  is  no  other — of  God's  love  to 
man.  I  do  not,  indeed,  believe,  and  the 
Bible  does  not  teach,  that  the  cross  was 
in  any  sense  a  means  of  getting  God  to 
love  the  world.  I  do  not  believe,  and  the 
Bible  does  not  teach,  that  Christ,  by  His 
death,  had  to  satisfy  the  wrath  of  God 
aeainst  the  world,  before  He  could  be 
brought  to  love  it.  To  speak  in  that  way 
is  to  put  Christianity  down  on  a  level 
with  the  worst  forms  of  paganism.  Christ 
died,  not  to  get  God  to  love  the  world, 
but  just  because  God  did  love  the  world, 
and  had  loved  it  from  all  eternity.  Let 
Mr.  Ingersoll  and  the  rest  misrepresent 
and  caricature  Christianity  as  they  may, 
this  is  the  simple  Gospel — that,  "  God  so 
loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only 
begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  believeth 
in  Him  should  not  perish  but  have  ever- 
lasting life."     The  cross  is  not  the  cause 

6 

8i 


/ 


of  God's  love ;  but  it  is  the  effect  of  it, 
and  the  measure  of  it,  and  the  revelation 
of  it.  And  wherever  in  the  Hght  of  the 
cross  God's  love  is  seen  that  love  is  felt. 
Let  me  repeat  this  truth  and  emphasize 
it.  Wherever  in  the  light  of  the  cross 
God's  love  is  seen — wherever  it  is  believed, 
accepted,  relied  upon — it  is  felt.  Faith  in 
it  is  the  channel  for  the  communication  of 
it.  It  is  love  apprehended  by  us  that  be- 
gets love  within  us.  "We  love  Him  be- 
cause He  first  loved  us."  It  is  only  in 
this  way  that  men  can  love  God.  It  is 
only  in  this  way  that  men  can  know  God. 
It  was  Richter,  I  believe,  who  said  that 
"  to  love  a  man  we  must  know  him,  but  to 
know  God  we  must  love  Him."  Whoever 
said  it,  the  saying  is  profoundly  true.  "  It 
is  with  the  heart  that  man  believes  unto 
rigrhteousness."  It  is  not  said  that  the 
heart  believes,  but  that  with  the  heart  the 
man  believes.  It  is,  of  course,  the  head 
that  believes,  but  it  believes  through  the 
heart.  Certainly  I  would  not  make  little 
82 


of  reason  in  religfion.     I  would  make  much 


& 


of  reason  in  religion.  There  is  no  religion 
worthy  of  the  name  witJiout  reaso7i.  But 
I  say  that  for  the  man  of  science  to  expect 
to  find  God  in  the  material  creation  with 
nothing  but  intellectual  analysis  is  just  as 
absurd  as  it  would  be  in  an  anatomist  to 
expect  to  find  the  soul  of  a  man  with 
nothing  but  a  dissecting  knife.  It  is  only 
the  heart  that  ever  really  finds  God  ;  and 
always  in  the  heart  that  does  find  Him 
there  is  love  for  Him.  I  do  not  mean 
that  man's  love  for  God  is  simply  a  nat- 
ural affection  lifted  up  to  a  supernatural 
object.  It  is  not.  It  is  itself  supernat- 
ural. It  is  not  something  drawn  out  of 
us  ;  it  is  something  put  into  us.  When  a 
man  gives  himself  up  to  God,  God  takes 
possession  of  that  man,  His  Spirit  enters 
into  the  man,  and,  entering,  sheds  abroad 
within  him  God's  own  love — not  simply 
awakens  human  love,  but  infuses  divine 
love ;  and  this  love,  which  flows  from 
God  to  man,  is  the  self-same  love  which 

83 


flows  back  from  man  to  God.  I  am  not 
using  the  language  of  figure.  I  am  using 
the  language  of  spiritual  science.  The 
characteristic  of  all  human  affection  is  par- 
ticularity. The  characteristic  of  Divine 
affection  is  universality.  I  mean  that 
human  affection  chooses  among  objects, 
while  Divine  affection  is  all-embracing. 
You  can  love  one  man  and  hate  another ; 
but  you  cannot  love  God  and  hate  at  all. 
The  reason  is,  than  you  can  love  God  only 
with  His  own  love,  and  that  love  is  full, 
radiant,  impartial.  Like  the  light  it  falls 
everywhere.  It  flows  out  beyond  the 
circle  of  personal  friendships.  It  flows 
out  beyond  the  circle  of  personal  acquaint- 
ance. It  extends  to  the  remotest  bound- 
aries of  the  peopled  earth.  It  seeks  to 
evanofelize  the  heathen.  It  seeks  to  re- 
claim  the  guilty.  It  seeks  to  comfort  the 
sorrowine.  It  leads  men  even  to  seek  to 
do  good  to  their  enemies — to  pray  for 
those  who  despitefully  use  them,  and  to 
bless  those  who  persecute  them.  Is  this 
84 


a  natural  affection  ?     I  tell  you  no.     It  is 
supernatural.     It  is  not  of  ourselves  ;  it  is 
the  crift  of  God.      But  it  is  a  gift  which  all 
may  have.     It  is  a  gift  which  no  one  can 
afford  to  be  without.      Selfishness  is  in  its 
very  nature  destructive.     Love  is  in  its 
very  nature  saving.      It  is  the  only  thing 
that  can  save.     Hereafter,  it  is  the  only 
thing  that  can  save  a  man  from  himself; 
and  to  be  saved  from  self  is  just  the  salva- 
tion that  the  Gospel  offers— to  be  saved 
from  a  state   of  things  within,   and   not 
from  any  mere  surroundings.    This  salva- 
tion, the  love  of  God,  whenever  felt,  must 
of  necessity  effect,  and  there  is  nothing 
else  that  can  effect  it  either  in  this  world 
or  in  any  other. 


85 


OUR    LORD'S    DIVINE    HUMAN- 
ITY 

The  second  Man  is  the  Lord  from  Heaven. — i  Cor.,  xv,  47. 

I  DESIRE  to  have  the  word  man,  in 
this  text,  regarded  as  emphatic.  Our 
first  mistake,  it  seems  to  me,  in  reasoning 
about  the  person  of  our  Lord  is  that  we 
assume  an  essential  diversity  between  the 
Divine  and  the  Human. 

Mr.  Liddon,  in  his  Bampton  Lectures 
on  "  Our  Lord's  Divinity  "  says  :  "  Christ's 
manhood  is  not  of  itself  an  individual  be- 
ing ;  it  is  not  a  seat  and  centre  of  person- 
ality. .  .  .  It  is  a  vesture  which  He 
has  folded  about  His  person  ;  it  is  an  in- 
strument through  which  He  places  Him- 
self in  contact  with  man  and  whereby  He 
acts  upon  humanity.  ...  In  saying 
that  Christ  took  our  humanity  upon  Him, 
86 


we  Imply  that  His  person  existed  before, 
and  that  the  manhood  which  He  assumed 
was  itself  impersonal." 

I  do  not  quote  these  words  of  Mr.  Lid- 
don  with  any  view  to  controvert  them — 
very  far  from  it.  I  quote  them  simply  to 
say  this  :  that,  without  something  more — 
something  which  Mr.  Liddon  does  not 
state — the  fact  of  our  Lord's  perfect  man- 
hood does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  estab- 
lished. Impersonal  humanity,  joined  to 
an  alien  person,  in  association  with  an 
alien  nature,  does  not  seem  to  me  to  make 
a  perfect  man.  My  own  position,  let  me 
say  at  once,  is  that  original,  substantive, 
humanity  subsists  in  God ;  that  in  God 
and  man  we  behold  not  two  alien  and  ex- 
clusive natures,  but  that  the  Human,  in 
its  ideal  condition,  is  included  within  the 
Divine.  Certainly,  I  think  this  position 
must  be  conceded  true,  if  truth  be  con- 
ceded to  the  position  of  Mr.  Liddon 
— which  is  simply  the  position  of  the 
Church.      The    position    of    Mr.    Liddon 

87 


and  the  Church  is  this  :  that  the  words 
Human  Nature  are  not  simply  a  con- 
venient expression  for  the  many  points  in 
which  individual  men  happen  to  resemble 
one  another,  but  that  they  stand  for  a 
real  something  to  which  all  such  resem- 
blances are  due — that  there  is  not  a  sepa- 
rate human  nature  belonging  to  each 
individual  of  the  race,  but  that  all  the 
individuals  have  one  and  the  same  human 
nature  in  common.  This  nature,  the 
position  is,  is  not  parcelled  out — one  part 
falling  to  one  person,  and  another  part 
to  another — but  each  person  inherits  the 
whole.  In  each  man  it  is  individualized, 
but  among  all  men  it  is  not  divided. 

Now,  I  say,  if  this  teaching  be — as  I, 
for  one,  believe  it  to  be — true ;  if  it  be 
true  that  human  nature  is  not  a  mere 
generalization,  but  a  generic  entity  —  a 
something  which  individual  men  do  not 
constitute,  but  which,  on  the  contrary, 
constitutes  them  individual  men — conform- 
ing them  to  the  distinctively  human  type  ; 


if  it  be  true  that  human  nature  is  a  some- 
thins:  which  can  be  conceived  of — as  Mr. 
Liddon,  in  the  words  just  quoted,  does 
conceive  of  it — as  subsisting  apart  from 
any  human  person,  then  I  say  that  human 
nature,  since  its  necessary  subsistence  is 
not  in  men,  and  must  be  somewhere,  and 
since  it  cannot  be  in  finite  beings  other 
than  men,  must  subsist  essentially  in  God. 
And  just  this  I  understand  to  be  the  clear 
teaching  of  Scripture.  The  teaching  of 
Scripture  is,  that  the  image  of  God  is  in 
man.  And  this  we  say  ;  but  we  shrink 
from  saying  what,  nevertheless,  we  ought 
in  consistency  to  say  —  that  if  the  image 
of  God  is  in  man,  the  original,  or  sub- 
stance, of  man  must  be  in  God.  We  ex- 
plain the  creation  of  man  in  God's  image 
as  meaning  that  God  took  some  imper- 
sonal substance  and  fashioned  it  into  a 
being  resembling  Himself.  This  will  not 
do.  Among  thinking  men  all  such  car- 
penter-theories of  creation  may  be  said  to 
have  died  out.  Man  is  not  a  substance. 
89 


He  cannot  be.  There  can  be  but  one 
substance  in  existence,  and  that  is  God. 
The  Infinite  cannot  be  added  to.  Man 
is  but  a  finite  image  of  God.  In  trying 
to  conceive  that  man,  as  a  mere  image, 
can  be  anything  real,  anything  more  than 
such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of — we  find 
ourselves  perplexed.  It  is  natural  that 
we  should.  It  is  our  own  infirmity.  Here 
in  this  world  we  never  see  the  image  of 
anything  but  what  is  material.  When  you 
stand  before  a  mirror,  you  see  your  own 
image  as  a  copy  not  only  of  your  appear- 
ance but  of  your  motions.  It  moves 
when  you  move,  and  as  you  move.  It 
does  whatever  you  do,  and  it  does  nothing 
else.  This  results  from  the  fact  that  it  is 
simply  an  image  of  the  body,  and  the  body 
is  only  matter.  It  has  no  intelligence  or 
will  of  its  own.  A  material  image  can 
copy  no  more  than  belongs  to  matter, 
while  a  spiritual  image  can  copy  no  less 
than  belongs  to  spirit.  It  must,  therefore, 
be  living,  intelligent,  volitional.  It  must 
90 


have  a  personality  of  its  own.  If  the 
image  of  God  were  not  capable  of  think- 
ing for  itself,  and  of  willing  itself,  it  would, 
in  so  far,  be  no  image  of  God  at  all. 

Do  you  ask  how,  by  what  process  such 
an  image  could  proceed  from  God  —  how 
it  could  get  personal  otherness  from  Him  ? 
You  are  asking  about  the  whole  mys- 
tery of  life.  I  do  not  know.  I  know  that 
a  substantial  something  cannot  be  created 
out  of  nothing.  I  know  that  we  are  not 
God.  I  know  that  we  are  not  separate 
parts  of  God.  I  am  shut  in,  therefore,  to 
the  conclusion  that  our  constitutional  rela- 
tion to  God  can  be  expressed  only,  as  the 
Bible  does  express  it,  by  this  word  image. 
It  is  certain  we  have  not  the  ground  of 
our  being  within  ourselves.  The  truth, 
thus  stated,  no  one  will  question.  And 
yet  the  truth  thus  stated  is  simply  the 
truth  that  we  have  not  within  ourselves 
the  substance  of  our  being.  The  sub- 
stance of  our  being  —  the  original  and 
prototype  of  our  humanity  —  is  in  God. 

91 


It  is  in  the  Logos,  or  Word,  or  Son 
of  God,  of  Whom  it  is  revealed  that 
not  only  through  Him  were  all  things 
made  that  have  been  made,  but  in  Him 
all  things  consist ;  He  is  the  Mediator 
not  in  Redemption  only,  but  in  Creation. 
He  is  the  Unity  of  the  Infinite  and  the 
Finite.  In  Him  Divinity  and  Humanity 
stand  related  in  a  way  which  we  may 
think  of  as  the  relation  to  one  another  of 
the  two  poles  of  a  magnet.  In  Christ, 
says  a  profound  thinker,  "the  transition 
from  one  nature  to  another  is  not  over  any 
chasm  or  even  line  of  division,  but  clear 
and  continuous,  as  the  transition  from 
one  pole  of  the  magnet  to  the  other.  .  .  . 
He  is  thus  the  way  to  the  Father,  as  a 
mountain  path  is  the  way  to  the  mountain 
top.  And  as  the  eye  of  a  traveller  at  the 
foot  may  slowly  travel  up  the  majestic 
slope  till  it  is  lost  in  the  clouds,  so  the 
mind  may  contemplate  Christ  from  His 
lowliest  and  most  human  traits,  where  He 
is  one  with  the  humblest  of  ourselves,  up 
92 


beyond  the  highest  reach  and  limit  of  hu- 
manity— '  far  above  all  principalities  and 
powers,  and  every  name  that  is  named  ' — 
to  that  dazzling  summit  of  glory  where 
He  is  one  with  God." 

The  Nicene  Creed  declares,  I  know 
that  the  Eternal  Son  "was  made  man." 
I  accept  the  statement  in  what  I  take  to 
be  its  intended  sense.  But  the  expression 
itself  is  not  in  Scripture.  The  Scripture 
expressions  are  that  "the  Word  was  made 
flesh  "  —  that  the  Son  was  "  manifest  in 
the  flesh  " — that  because  the  children  were 
partakers  of  the  flesh  and  blood,  He  also 
Himself  likewise  took  part  in  the  same. 
There  is  nothing  to  imply  that  the  Word, 
in  becoming  incarnate,  became  other  in 
essential  nature  than  He  had  been.  It  is 
simply  taught  that  He  became  other  in 
condition — that  He  laid  aside,  as  St.  Paul 
declares,  the  form  of  God,  and  took  upon 
Him  the  form  of  a  servant.  I  do  not  say, 
with  the  ancient  Apollinarians,  that  He 
simply  took  upon  Him  a  fleshly  body  and 

92, 


an  animal  soul ;  I  say  that  He  took  upon 
Him  our  whole  condition,  that  He  de- 
scended into  all  the  limitations  of  our 
nature — body,  soul,  and  spirit. 

The  view  thus  stated  does  not  attempt 
to  modify  any  of  the  conclusions  of  the 
Church  as  regards  the  person  of  our 
Lord.  It  simply  attempts  to  make  the 
foundation  upon  which  those  conclusions 
rest  more  scriptural,  more  rational,  more 
stable.  It  exposes  no  point  of  the  faith 
to  attack — so  far  from  that,  it  protects 
the  faith  just  at  the  point  where  attacks 
have  been  most  frequent.  It  meets  the 
whole  Socinian  error  by  first  conceding 
the  demand  out  of  which  the  Socinian 
error  grew  —  the  demand,  I  mean,  for 
unity  in  the  person  of  our  Lord.  Socin- 
ianism  could  find  no  ground  of  unity  for 
the  person  of  our  Lord  except  in  His 
Humanity  to  the  exclusion  of  His  Divin- 
ity. Our  present  thought  finds  such 
ground  of  unity  in  the  Divinity  of  our 
Lord  as  including  the  type  and  substance 

94 


of  His  Humanity.  It  sees  in  Christ  not 
the  conjunction  of  two  aHen  natures,  but 
the  subHme  reaHty  which  He  Himself 
disclosed  in  declaring,  "  I  am  the  root 
and  the  offspring  of  David," — not  the  off- 
spring only,  but  the  root.  He  was  the 
root  of  David,  just  because  He  is  the  root 
of  every  man.  He  is  the  root  of  our 
whole  Humanity.  He  is  the  ideal  man. 
We  are  apt  to  think  of  Him  as  an  ex- 
ceptional man  —  exceptional,  I  mean,  to 
the  type  of  man.  We  are  apt  to  think 
this  of  Him  because  of  His  Divinity.  We 
are  mistaken.  Between  Divinity  and  Hu- 
manity there  is  no  opposition.  Christ 
was  perfectly  human  for  the  very  reason 
that  He  was  perfectly  Divine.  He  is  the 
typical  man.  It  is  we  who  are  excep- 
tional. He  is  the  normal  man.  It  is  we 
who  are  abnormal.  In  Him  —  in  His 
character,  in  His  life  —  is  the  pattern 
of  all  true  manliness  ;  and  just  in  the  de- 
gree that  we  depart  from  that  pattern, 
just    in    the    degree    that   we    turn    from 

95 


truthfulness,  and  purity,  and  love,  and 
gentleness,  and  devotion  to  the  Father — 
just  in  that  degree  we  become  unmanly. 

Christ,  again,  being  the  ideal  man,  is, 
of  course,  the  complete  man.  It  is  sel- 
dom, that,  among  our  fellows,  we  meet 
with  more  than  an  approach  to  roundness 
of  character.  We  develop — where  we 
develop  at  all  in  the  right  direction — 
without  much  regard  to  symmetry.  We 
find  one  manly  trait  prominent  in  one 
man,  and  another  in  another  man.  In 
Christ,  all  manly  traits  were  perfect,  and 
in  perfect  balance.  All  manly  traits,  I 
say — but  I  use  the  word  in  its  broad, 
generic  sense  ;  for  whereas  among  mere 
men  humanity  is  divided  Into  male  and 
female,  neither  man  alone  nor  woman 
alone  representing  it  in  its  totality,  in 
Christ  these  two  types  of  character  were 
united.  The  distinction  of  sex  is  the  dis- 
tinction of  the  entire  nature.  It  runs 
through  the  whole  spiritual  constitution  ; 
and  in  this  sense  Christ  was  as  truly 
96 


womanly  as  He  was  manly.  Christ,  again, 
is  the  universal  man.  He  showed  no 
trace  of  his  age  or  circumstances.  He 
was  born  under  the  reign  of  Augustus 
Caesar;  but  for  anything  in  His  life  or 
teachinofs  He  mig^ht  as  well  have  been 
born  in  the  nineteenth  century.  He  was 
born  a  Jew  ;  but  for  anything  Jewish  in 
His  character,  He  might  as  well  have 
been  born  on  the  planet  Uranus.  He 
was  born  in  poverty  and  obscurity  ;  but 
there  was  nothino-  in  Him  to  sug-orest  a 
question  as  to  rank  or  condition.  He 
was  superior  to  His  whole  environment. 
But  He  is  the  universal  man  in  a  sense 
far  deeper  than  this.  He  is  the  ideal 
man  in  every  actual  man — the  universal 
man  in  every  particular  man.  St.  Paul 
teaches  that  every  man  is  made  up  of  two 
very  different  men — the  natural  man  and 
the  spiritual  man.  The  natural  man  is 
that  which  constitutes  our  separate  in- 
dividuality. The  spiritual  man  is  the  uni- 
versal man  within  us — t.  e.,  the  humanity 

7 

97 


of  Christ.  Did  it  ever  occur  to  us  what 
precisely  is  meant  by  loving  our  neigh- 
bor— that  is,  all  other  men — as  ourselves? 
To  love  individuals,  as  individuals,  we 
must  know  them.  In  this  sense  we  could 
love  only  a  very  few.  In  this  sense  we 
could  n't  possibly  love  people  in  China 
or  Central  Africa.  The  author  of  Ecce 
Homo  says  that  Christ  begot  in  men  the 
sentiment  which  he  calls  the  Eiztkusiasm 
of  humanity.  "  Enthusiasm  of  humanity  " 
is  an  expression  meaning  not  love  for 
human  individualities,  but  love  for  the 
universal  man  in  every  particular  man. 
Love  for  Christ  means  love  for  the  whole 
race  in  which  Christ  insphered  Himself. 
It  is  the  only  love  that  is,  or  can  be,  uni- 
versal. Not  until  Christ  came  into  the 
world  did  the  world  so  much  as  dream  of 
a  universal  brotherhood ;  and  not  until 
the  world  receives  Christ  into  its  heart 
will  its  dream  of  brotherhood  be  realized. 
Christ,  finally,  being  the  universal  man, 
is  also  the   representative   man.     He  is 


the  second  man.  He  stands  to  the  whole 
race  in  the  relation  of  Head — to  whom 
we,  by  the  operation  of  His  Spirit,  may  be 
personally  joined,  and  so  through  Him 
be  saved.  He  is  the  one  Hope  for  man. 
There  is  no  other.  There  never  has 
been.  He  is  the  Light  of  men.  He  is 
the  Light  of  all  men  ;  and  everywhere  and 
always,  men  who  have  followed  the  light 
as  they  have  seen  it  have  consciously  or 
unconsciously  been  led  to  Him.  Through 
Him,  the  only  Door  between  earth  and 
heaven,  all  the  millions  of  the  saved  have 
passed  ;  and  the  solemn  words,  written  as  if 
to  stand  over  the  portals  of  the  world  of 
life,  stand  true  for  us  and  will  stand  true 
for  the  last  redeemed  child  of  man — "  I 
am  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life :  no 
man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  Me." 


99 


THE   RESURRECTION 

Now  that  the  dead  are  raised,  even  Moses  showed  at  the 
bush,  when  he  calleth  the  Lord  the  God  of  Abraham,  and 
the  God  of  Isaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob.  For  he  is  not  a 
God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living:  for  all  live  unto  him. —  St. 
Luke  XX.  37,  38, 

J\  yi  Y  purpose  is  to  preach  three  sermons 
■^  "  ^  this  Eastertide  in  a  series  —  the 
first,  on  the  Resurrection,  the  second,  on 
the  Resurrection-body,  and  the  third,  on 
the  Resurrection-world  :  and  I  hope  that 
no  one  will  undertake  to  pass  judgment 
on  any  part  of  my  teaching  until  the 
whole  shall  have  been  placed  before  you. 
My  subject  this  morning  is  the  Resur- 
rection. Let  me  say  at  the  outset  that  in 
the  New  Testament  this  v^ordresurreciion 
means  one  thing,  and  one  thing  only.  It 
means  simply  what  is  commonly  meant 
by  immortality.  It  means  simply  the 
survival    of   a    man's    personality    in    the 


next  world  after  his  death  in  this.  It  is 
something  that  is  predicated  only  of  per- 
sons—  never  of  their  bodies.  Certainly 
the  New  Testament  teaches  that  men  are 
to  have  bodies  in  the  resurrection,  and 
that  in  the  truest  sense  they  are  to  have 
the  same  bodies  then  as  they  have  now. 
It  teaches  this  as  a  fact  of  the  resurrection 
life  ;  but  it  does  not  teach  that  this  fact  is 
what  the  resurrection  means.  In  the  New 
Testament,  I  repeat,  the  word  resicrrection 
means  but  one  thing  —  personal  survival 
after  death.  And  in  saying  this,  let  me 
add,  I  am  not  saying  something  that  was 
never  said  before.  I  find  it  said  in  the 
writings  of  great  scholars  and  divines  as 
well  of  the  past  as  of  the  present,  as  well 
within  our  own  communion  as  without.  If 
I  seem  to  make  but  little  of  such  authority, 
it  is  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  author- 
ity of  the  kind  is  needed.  The  Divine 
Authority  is  enough. 

There  are  three  places  in  the  New  Test- 
ament where  the  resurrection  is  spoken  of 


in  the  literal,  as  distinguished  from  the 
apocalyptic  style.  In  the  celebrated  fif- 
teenth chapter  of  the  first  Epistle  to  the 
Corinthians,  St.  Paul  first  argues  for  the 
resurrection  —  for  the  resurrection  simply  ; 
and  in  the  entire  course  of  this  argfument 
there  is  not  one  word  of  allusion  to  the 
body.  The  substitution  of  re-aniTnation  of 
the  dead  body  for  resurrection  would  turn 
the  reasoning  into  the  sheerest  absurdity. 
The  whole  point  of  the  argument  is  in  the 
words,  "As  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so  in 
Christ  shall  we  all  be  made  alive'''  It  is 
not  until  the  Apostle  has  said  all  that  he 
has  to  say  touching  the  question  of  the 
resurrection  that  he  takes  up  the  further 
question  of  the  resurrection-body  —  begin- 
ning with  the  words,  "  But  some  man  will 
say.  How  are  the  dead  raised  up,  and  with 
what  body  do  they  come  ?  " 

In  the  other  two  places  of  Scripture  to  be 
mentioned  in  this  connection  we  have  the 
recorded  words  from  our  Lord  Himself. 
In  one  of  them  we  have  His  interview 


with  Mary  weeping  for  the  death  of 
Lazarus.  **  Thy  brother,"  He  said,  "  shall 
rise  again."  "  I  know,"  she  answered, 
"  that  he  shall  rise  again  in  the  resurrec- 
tion at  the  last  day."  Then  came  the 
solemn  assurance  that  the  resurrection 
consists,  not  in  the  re-animation  of  dead 
matter  at  some  future  and  far-off  day,  but 
solely  in  the  unbroken  continuity  of  life 
beyond  the  grave.  "  I  am  the  Resurrection 
and  the  Life  .  .  .  Whosoever  liveth 
and  believeth  in  Me  shall  never  die."  Not 
one  word  about  the  body,  but  simply 
"shall  never  die."  Of  course,  our  Lord, 
in  making  resurrection  to  depend  upon 
belief  in  Himself,  distinguishes  between 
resurrection  and  resurrection,  just  as,  in 
saying,  "  It  is  not  all  of  life  to  live,"  we 
ourselves  distinofuish  between  life  and  life. 
But  this  does  not,  in  the  least,  affect  the 
point  that  I  am  making.  /The  point  that  I 
am  making  is  simply  this,  mat,  in  the  teach- 
ing of  our  Lord,  the  idea  of  resurrection 
concerns  simply  the  survival  of  persons, 
103 


and  is  wholly  distinct  from  the  idea  of 
body. 

In  the  place  remaining  to  be  spoken 
of,  this  point  is  brought  out  with  such 
perfect  clearness  that  I  see  not  how  any 
one  can  doubt  regarding  it.  Our  Lord 
was  speaking  to  the  Sadducees.  The 
Sadducees  did  not  believe  in  any  resur- 
rection ;  but  they  did  believe  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Moses.  It  was  from  the  writings 
of  Moses,  accordingly,  that  our  Lord  drew 
His  argument.  He  laid  His  finger  on  a 
passage  whose  genuineness  they  could  not 
dispute,  and  it  flashed  yvith  a  meaning 
they  had  not  suspected.  /  **  Now  that  the 
dead  are  raised,"  He  said,  "even  Moses 
showed  at  the  bush,  when  he  calleth  the 
Lord  the  God  of  Abraham,  and  the  God 
of  Isaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob.  For  He 
is  not  a  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the 
^living."  jHis  argument  was  this  —  that 
Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and  Jacob  had,  long 
before  the  time  of  Moses,  passed  out  of 
this  world  ;  and  that  if  they  had,  at  the 
104 


\ 


same  time,  passed  out  of  existence,  they 

were  nothing,  and  nothing  could  have  no 

God.     If  the   Lord  was  their  God  still, 

then  the  personal  relation  between  God  i  i    i 

and   them   was   still    in    force,  and  they,  l-' **".       /Ia« 

therefore,  must  have  survived  death  ;  and  .  u-A^^^ 

in  the  fact  of  their  surviving  death  was 

seen  the  fact   of   their   resurrection.     If 

they  were  still  alive  in  some  other  world, 

they  would   have    risen    into   that  world 

from  this. 

Our  Lord  was  not  using  the  argument 
that  would  be  the  most  convincing  to  all 
men.  But  He  was  using  the  argument 
that  would  be  the  most  likely  to  convince 
the  Sadducees.  With  our  modern  scien- 
tists, and  with  those  whom  our  modern 
scientists  have  made  sceptical,  of  course 
the  writings  of  Moses  go  for  nothing. 
But  is  there  no  arg-ument  whose  force 
even  these  men  must  own  ? — no  argument 
to  justify,  even  to  the  coldest  intellect, 
the  grand  conclusion  of  the  text,  that 
"  unto  God,  the  dead  all  live"  ? 

105 


The  question  of  the  continued  exist- 
ence of  the  human  soul  hereafter  depends 
first  and  mainly  upon  what  answer  is 
given  to  the  question,  Is  there  such  a 
thing  as  a  human  soul  existing  here  ?  I 
appeal,  for  the  answer  to  this  question,  to 
the  authority  of  consciousness.  We  know 
that  there  is  a  world  around  us  —  but 
how  ?  By  demonstration  of  reason  ?  So 
far  from  that,  philosophy  concedes,  and 
long  ago  conceded,  that  no  rational  de- 
monstration of  this  fact  is  within  the  lim- 
its of  possibility.  We  know  that  there  is 
a  world  around  us  by  what  we  feel  with- 
in the  sphere  of  our  own  consciousness. 
And  in  precisely  the  same  way  we  know 
that  there  is  a  soul  within  us.  We  are 
conscious  of  personality.  We  are  con- 
scious of  will.  We  are  conscious  of  moral 
obligation.  We  are  just  as  distinctly  con- 
scious of  these  facts  of  our  own  interior 
experience  as  we  are  conscious  of  a  feel- 
ing- of  resistance  when  we  strike  a  rock. 
If  we  set  aside  these  facts  of  conscious- 
io6 


ness,  we  set  aside  the  only  ground  on 
which  we  can  beUeve  in  anything— even 
in  the  fact  of  our  own  existence. 

Now  what  is  the  argument  on  the  other 
side?     On  what  ground  is  it  urged  that 
mind  is  but  a  mode  of  physical  energy? 
—that  reason,  and  will,   and  conscience, 
and  love  are  but  secretions  of  the  brain  ? 
The    argument    is   this— absolutely   this, 
and  nothing  more  :  that  mental  activity  is 
dependent  upon  physical  condition.     We 
admit  the  fact.     It  has  been  admitted  al- 
ways.    The   brain  is  the  organ   through 
which,   in  this  world,  the  mind  is  mani- 
fested.    When  the  brain  is  disordered,  it 
executes  the  mandates  of  the  mind  con- 
fusedly.    When  the  brain  is  dead,  it  can 
execute  no  mandate  of  the  mind  at  all. 
But  to  argue  from  this  that  it  is  the  brain 
that   thinks,  and  sorrows,  and  fears,  and 
loves   is   not   one   whit  less  absurd  than 
to  argue  from    the    fact   that   when  the 
strings  of  a  violin  are  loosened  or  broken 
the  Tnstrument  can  give  forth  no  sound, 
107 


therefore  a  violin  in  good  condition  really 
makes  its  own  music — the  necessity  of  a 
violin-player  being  a  popular  but  baseless 
assumption.  It  is  one  of  the  prevalent 
impressions  just  now  that  recent  science 
has  furnished  materialism  with  arguments 
of  a  very  formidable  kind.  In  fact,  one 
of  the  leading  dailies  in  this  city  devoted 
an  editorial,  some  time  ago,  to  saying  this 
very  thing.  It  more  than  intimated  that 
Christian  scholars  are  in  no  state  of  pre- 
paredness to  defend  the  position  in  which 
they  find  themselves.  And  just  here,  let 
me  say,  is  the  great  difficulty  with  which, 
in  contending  for  the  faith,  we  find  our- 
selves confronted.  It  is  not  the  writings 
of  really  thoughtful  men.  It  is  the  vague 
and  ignorant  impressions  of  those  writings 
that  are  imposed  upon  the  public  mind 
through  the  columns  of  the  newspaper 
press.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  science  has 
furnished  materialism  with  no  arguments 
at  all.  I  do  not  ask  you  to  take  my  own 
authority  for  the  truth  of  this  statement. 
io8 


I  shall  quote  two  of  the  foremost  thinkers 
of  the  day,  both  swinging  clear  of  all  au- 
thority— Bible,  Church,  and  Creed, — the 
one  an  Englishman,  the  other  an  Ameri- 
can. The  Englishman  is  Professor  Tyn- 
dall.  "  When  you  have  proved  every  fact 
that  you  claim  to  prove,"  he  writes  to  the 
Materialists,  "you  have  proved  nothing. 
You  leave  the  connection  between  the 
mind  and  the  body  exactly  where  it  was 
before."  The  American  is  Mr.  John 
Fiske,  of  Harvard  University.  "  I  be- 
lieve," this  author  says,  "that  modern 
scientific  philosophy,  as  represented  by 
Spencer  and  Huxley,  not  only  affords  no 
support  to  materialism,  but  condemns  it 
utterly,  and  drives  it  off  the  field  alto- 
gether. I  believe  that  it  is  even  clearer 
to-day  than  it  was  in  the  time  of  Des- 
cartes, that  no  possible  analytic  leger- 
demain can  ever  translate  thought  into 
extension,  or  extension  into  thought.  The 
antithesis  is  of  God's  own  making,  and 
no  wit  of  man  can  undo  it."  This  is  as 
109 


reasonable  as  it  Is  candid.  Science — that 
is,  the  science  of  nature — cannot  touch  the 
question  of  the  soul.  But  the  testimony  of 
consciousness  can,  and  it  does.  Conscious- 
ness, in  revealing  the  soul  as  personal,  as 
volitional,  as  moral,  declares  it  to  be,  not 
the  product  of  the  body,  but  an  entity 
different  from  the  body.  This  entity  now 
exists.  What  reason  we  have  for  sup- 
posing that  when  separated  from  the  body 
it  ceases  to  exist,  I  challenge  any  man  to 
tell  me.  No  man  can  tell  me.  There  is 
no  reason  for  it.  There  is  not  the  faintest 
shadow  of  a  reason  for  it.  The  fact  that 
in  death  the  body  is  unconscious  furnishes 
no  ground  for  even  a  suspicion  that  the 
soul  becomes  unconscious  with  it.  The 
body  ought  to  be  unconscious  in  death. 
It  is  precisely  what  the  believer  in  the 
survival  of  the  soul  ought  to  expect.  The 
body  is  but  matter  ;  and  matter,  into  what- 
ever forms  it  may  be  organized,  can  never 
become  a  conscious  thing.  To  suppose 
that   it   could,  would  be   to   suppose  the 


utter  annihilation  of  its  nature,  and  the 
substitution  of  something  else  in  place  of 
it.  (^he  body  is  not  conscious  even  in 
life.  It  is  only  the  soul  that  is  ever  con- 
scious ;  and  when  the  soul  leaves  the 
body  it  is  like  the  breaking  up  of  a  tem- 
porary partnership  in  which,  according  to 
agreement,  each  party  takes  out  what  is 
properly  belonging  to  him.  In  this  part- 
nership in  man,  the  outer  body  belongs  to 
the  natural  world,  and  the  natural  world 
would  take  back  the  outer  body.  The 
conscious  soul  belongs  to  the  spiritual 
world ;  and  the  spiritual  world  takes  back  j. 
the  conscious  soul.  This  is  all.  This,  I 
believe,  is  the  only  view  of  the  facts  in 
the  case  that  reason,  left  to  itself,  would 
think  of  takincT.      But  this  is  a  matter  in 

o 

which,  unhappily,  reason  is  not  always  left 
to  itself.  It  is,  perhaps,  seldom,  if  ever,  left 
to  itself.  The  thing  that  seems  to  furnish 
the  strongest  argument,  with  most  men, 
against  our  survival  of  death,  has  nothing 
at  all  to  do  with  reason  ;  it  is  simply  an 


appeal  to  sense.  It  is  the  spectacle  of 
death,  as  its  effects  are  seen  in  the  body. 
The  body  is  all  of  man  that  we  ever 
really  see  ;  and  hence  it  is  that,  in  spite  of 
our  philosophy,  we  come,  without  being 
aware  of  it,  to  think  of  the  body  as  the 
man  ;  and  when  we  see  the  body  bereft 
of  every  sign  of  consciousness,  we  can 
hardly  persuade  ourselves  that  it  is  other- 
wise as  regards  the  soul.  This  comes 
from  the  infirmity  of  mental  habit. 

But  the  infirmity  of  mental  habit  is 
seconded  in  this  same  direction  by  infir- 
mity of  another  kind.  It  is  seconded  by 
moral  infirmity.  A  downright  practical 
conviction  of  the  immortal  life  cannot 
come  through  the  understanding  only. 
Within  the  sphere  of  the  supersensible,  a 
man  can  really  believe  only  according 
to  what  the  man  himself  is.  He  can- 
not really  believe  in  anything  the  truth  of 
which  finds  no  correspondence  within  him- 
self. Evidence  in  such  a  case  may  silence, 
but  it  cannot  satisfy.     "  A  true  and  satis- 

112 


fying  sense  of  immortality,"  says  a  great 
divine,  "  cannot  be  taken  at  second  hand. 
We  cannot  read  it  in  the  pages  of  a 
book,  whether  of  nature  or  of  inspiration. 
There  must  be  fellowship  with  the  Christ 
of  the  Resurrection  before  we  can  feel 
its  power."  "Join  thyself  to  the  eternal 
God,"  says  St.  Augustine,  "  and  thou  wilt 
know  thyself  eternal."  Just  in  the  degree 
in  which  we  feel  the  stirrings  of  the  im- 
mortal life  within  us  here  and  now  will 
the  conviction  of  the  immortal  life  be- 
yond become  real  and  abiding.  The 
blank  and  dreary  wall  of  doubt  that  sense 
has  built  between  that  life  and  faith  can- 
not be  broken  down  by  any  battering- 
rams  of  arguments  ;  it  need  not  be.  All 
that  we  need  is  to  let  God's  spirit  take 
hold  of  us,  and  lift  us  up  so  high  that  we 
can  reach  over  and  feel  for  ourselves  that 
there  are  things  on  the  other  side. 


"3 


THE   RESURRECTION-BODY 

But  some  man  will  say,  How  are  the  dead  raised  up  ?    and 
with  what  body  do  they  come? — i  Cor.  xv.  35 

IN  my  first  sermon  on  the  Resurrection 
it  was  my  aim  to  show  that  the  word 
resurrection  is  used,  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, to  mean  one  thing,  and  one  thing 
only — the  rising  of  the  real  man  into  the 
life  of  another  world  when  the  material 
body  dies  in  this. 

In  this  meaning  of  the  word,  the  resur- 
rection must,  of  course,  take  place,  not  at 
one  and  the  same  time  to  all  men  at  some 
future  and  far-off  day,  but  to  every  man 
in  his  own  order — that  is,  at  the  time 
of  his  death.  That  there  are  passages  in 
the  New  Testament  which  might  seem  to 
support  the  traditional  view  as  against  my 
own — of  this  I  am  well  aware.  The  fact 
is  easily  accounted  for.  It  was  natural 
114 


that  when  our  Lord  referred  to  the  resur- 
rection with  a  distinctly  didactic  purpose, 
He  should  present  it  in  one  style,  and 
when  He  referred  to  it  with  a  merely 
moral  purpose,  He  should  present  it  in 
another.  In  the  former  case,  speaking  to 
the  understanding,  His  aim  would  be 
clearness.  In  the  latter  case,  speaking  to 
the  heart.  His  aim  would  be  impressive- 
ness.  In  the  one  case.  His  language 
would  be  literal ;  in  the  other  case,  it 
would  just  as  naturally  be  figurative. 
And  so,  in  fact,  we  find  it.  In  His  con- 
versations with  the  Sadducees,  and  with 
Mary  near  the  grave  of  Lazarus,  we  find 
our  Lord  speaking  of  the  resurrection 
of  the  dead  literally,  as  a  present  fact ; 
while,  at  another  time,  we  find  Him 
presenting  the  same  fact  in  a  picture — 
a  method  of  presentation,  of  course,  in 
which  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  suc- 
cession in  time,  but,  instead  of  it,  only 
contiguity  in  space. 

But  the  chief  thing  that  has  kept  men 

"5 


from  accepting  our  Lord's  plain  teaching 
about  the  resurrection  is  the  beHef  that 
the  resurrection-body  is  to  be  material — 
that  it  is  to  be  composed,  in  fact,  of  the 
very  particles  of  matter  that  are  laid  aside 
at  death.  It  is  seen  that  no  such  resur- 
rection as  this  belief  demands  has  taken 
place  as  yet,  and  from  this  it  is  concluded, 
in  the  very  face  of  our  Lord's  most  literal 
and  most  positive  teaching,  that  no  resur- 
rection is  to  take  place  until  the  end  of 
the  world. 

This  belief  is  certainly  unreasonable. 
It  is  just  as  certainly  unscriptural.  Our 
Lord,  indeed,  says  nothing  about  the 
resurrection-body.  He  says  to  the  Sad- 
ducees  that  Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and  i 
Jacob  must  have  risen  from  the  dead,  |Sy 
because  they  are  now  living.  He  urges 
upon  Martha,  in  proof  of  the  immediate 
resurrection  of  the  dead,  that  those  who 
believe  in  Him  can  never  die.  But  as  to 
the  question  :  "  With  what  body  do  they 
come?"  He  says  not  one  word.  For 
ii6 


answer  to  this  question  we  must  go  to  St. 
Paul — to  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  his  first 
Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  In  that  chap- 
ter, as  I  said  in  my  first  sermon  in  this 
course,  St.  Paul  argues,  first  of  all,  for  the 
resurrection  as  a  fact — using  the  word  res- 
urrectio7i  in  precisely  the  same  sense  as 
that  in  which  our  Lord  had  used  it,  in 
the  sense,  that  is,  of  personal  survival 
after  death.  Then,  when  he  has  finished 
his  direct  argument  for  the  resurrection, 
he  conceives  of  an  objection  which  might 
be  offered,  and  takes  up  that.  "  But  some 
man  will  say,  How  are  the  dead  raised 
up  ?  and  with  what  body  do  they  come  ?  " 
Remember,  St.  Paul  does  not  identify 
the  question  of  the  resurrection-body  with 
that  of  the  resurrection.  He  treats  it  as 
simply  something  with  which  the  question 
of  the  resurrection  might  be  complicated. 
To  him  the  question  of  the  resurrection- 
body  was  so  clear  as  to  need  no  arguing. 
It  was  so  perfectly  clear  to  him,  in  fact, 
that  he  could  hardly  speak  patiently  about 
117 


it  even  to  a  merely  supposed  objector. 
"  Thou  fool !  "  he  said,  "  look  at  the  plant 
unfolding  from  the  seed,  and  learn  from 
that."  In  this  illustration  we  are  taught 
one  thing  with  absolute  certainty  ;  and 
that  is,  that  in  the  production  of  the 
resurrection-body  there  is  to  be  nothing 
miraculous.  Like  the  various  forms  of 
plant-life  in  nature,  it  is  to  be  the  result 
of  a  perfectly  normal  process  of  growth. 
To  this  teaching  of  St.  Paul's  the  tra- 
ditional view  of  the  question  stands  point- 
edly opposed.  It  makes  the  production 
of  the  resurrection-body  a  miracle.  In 
saying  this,  I  speak  advisedly.  The  last 
particles  of  matter  that  enter  into  one's 
natural  body  can  have  no  more  germina- 
tive  force  to  shape  themselves  into  a  spir- 
itual body  than  any  of  the  particles  of 
matter  that  entered  into  it  years  before 
and  have  gone  to  waste.  It  is  not  claimed, 
in  fact,  that  they  have.  The  claim  is  that 
God's  omniscience  knows  exactly  where 
each  one  of  those  last  particles  is,  and 
ii8 


that  at  the  end  of  the  world  His  ahnighty 
power  will  bring  them  all  together  again, 
and  rebuild  them  into  the  body  of  the  res- 
urrection. The  claim  is,  most  distinctly, 
that  the  resurrection  will  be  brouofht  about 
by  miracle.  And  this,  I  say,  is  pointedly 
opposed  to  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul, — just 
as  much  so  as  any  two  things  could  be. 
St.  Paul  did  not  believe  in  the  existence 
of  persons  in  a  disembodied  state.  He 
does  not  raise  the  question,  nor  conceive 
it  possible  to  be  raised,  whether  men 
shall,  or  shall  not,  have  bodies  in  the  life 
beyond.  He  considers  only  what  bodies 
they  shall  have,  and  how  they  are  to  get 
them.  The  resurrection-body,  he  says, 
is  to  be  a  spiritual  body  ;  or,  rather,  he 
says  that  it  2's  a  spiritual  body.  He 
speaks  of  it  as  existing  now.  "  There  is  a 
natural  body,"  he  says,  "  and  there  is  a 
spiritual  body "  ;  the  natural  being  first, 
not  in  the  order  of  existence,  but  simply 
in  the  order  of  disclosure.  It  is  my  own 
most  clear  conviction — more  than  once  ex- 
119 


expressed  from  this  pulpit — that  the  spirit- 
ual body  is  man's  true  body  ;  the  natural 
body  being  but  its  changeful  and  transi- 
tory wrapping  :  nor  in  this  connection  do 
I  stand  by  any  means  alone.  In  one  of 
the  published  sermons  of  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  thinkers  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, the  Rev.  Mr.  Baring-Gould,  I  find  a 
passage  so  pertinent  to  the  point  in  ques- 
tion that  I  shall  venture  here  to  introduce 
it.  "  Have  you  ever  seen,"  he  says,  "  a 
water-spout,  or  a  column  of  sand  travers- 
ing the  desert  ?  .  .  .  Both  are  pro- 
duced by  the  same  cause.  There  is  an 
eddy,  a  spin  of  wind  which  passes  over 
sea  and  land.  As  it  sweeps  along  the 
ocean,  it  catches  up  the  water,  and  whirls 
it  up  in  a  pillar  to  the  clouds  ;  and  there 
it  stands — an  opaque  trunk,  like  that  of  a 
gigantic  palm-tree — between  the  sea  and 
the  sky.  It  passes  on  till  it  touches  the 
land :  then  there  is  no  more  supply  of 
water  to  feed  it,  and  at  once  it  dies  away 
to    the    eye   and   discharges   itself    in   a 


torrent  of  rain.  Is  it  gone  altogether? 
No.  It  moves  on,  but  it  is  invisible. 
The  same  windy  spiral  sweeps  farther  in- 
land, and  now  it  crosses  a  desert.  At 
once  it  draws  the  light  particles,  and  in  a 
minute  is  again  visible  to  the  eye — now 
as  a  red-brown  pillar,  stalking  over  the 
waste.  It  travels  beyond  the  verge  of 
the  desert  and  at  once  vanishes  again. 
It  has  nothing  more  to  feed  it  and  make 
it  manifest  ;  but  it  is  there  still,  and  the 
line  of  its  course  is  marked  by  the  effects 
it  produces.  We  may,"  he  continues, 
"  take  this  as  an  illustration — not  a  very 
perfect  one,  but  still  as  one — of  the  spirit- 
ual body,  and  its  relation  to  matter.  We 
are,  each  of  us,  as  it  were,  some  such  a 
spiritual  existence  as  a  whirlwind,  and  life 
here  is  but  the  catching  up  of  elements — 
the  assimilation  and  sifting  out  of  the 
earthly  atoms  which  give  us  a  visible  ex- 
istence. As  long  as  we  eat  and  take  to  us 
material  to  raise  the  column  of  the  visible 
body,  so  long  we   may   be   said    to   live 

121 


in  the  world  ;  but  at  last  the  spiritual-elec- 
tive current  sweeps  on  to  other  soil,  and 
then  the  sandy  pillar  crumbles  away,  and 
all  that  is  left  of  the  living,  carnal  body  is 
the  little  heap  of  dust  in  the  church-yard. 
Are  we  no  more  ?  By  no  means.  The 
spiritual  body  still  lives,  but  is  passing 
over  the  tract  of  immaterialism.  It  takes 
up  no  more  earth,  and  is  therefore  no 
more  seen  of  men." 

In  this  illustration  we  must  beware  of 
one  thing —  I  mean  that  the  spiritual 
body,  here  likened  to  a  whirlwind,  is  in 
itself  invisible,  impalpable,  unsubstantial. 
It  is  all  that  to  us  here  in  the  material 
body  for  the  simple  reason  that  material 
senses  can  comprehend  nothing  but  ma- 
terial substance.  But  our  present  power 
of  apprehension  is  not  the  measure  of  all 
reality ;  and  when  we  pass  into  the  spirit- 
ual condition,  we  shall  certainly  find 
neither  our  bodies  nor  our  surroundings 
in  any  way  less  real  than  we  find  them 
here  and  now.     Of  this,  however,   I  am 


to  speak  in  m)-  sermon  on  the  resurrec- 
tion-world. 

If  now  the  question  be  asked  as  regards 
the  germ  of  the  spiritual  body,  I  answer 
that  this  germ    must    itself   be    spiritual. 
The  material  could  as  little  be  sublimated 
into  the  spiritual,  as  the  spiritual  could  be 
condensed  into    the    material.      But    the 
traditional  view  says  no.     It  says  that  the 
germ  of  the  spiritual  body  is  material.     It 
is   marvellous  how  men  will  seize   upon 
some   accidental    circumstance  in  a  com- 
parison, and  let  it  run   away  with  them. 
They   have    done    this   with    St.    Paul's 
comparison  of  the  growth  of    the  resur- 
rection-body to  that  of  a  plant.     With  St. 
Paul  himself,  clearly,  the  significant  point 
of  the  comparison  was  the  law  of  germi- 
nation   in   the    seed,    and    not    the   mere 
circumstance  of  place  where   the  seed  is 
sown.       And    yet,    fastening    upon    this 
mere  circumstance  — fastening   upon  the 
fact  that,  as  a  rule,  although  by  no  means 
universally,  seeds  germinate  under  ground 
123 


—  men  have  built  upon  it  the  argument 
that,  since  the  only  part  of  man  that  is 
ever  buried  in  the  ground  is  the  dead 
body,  therefore  it  is  the  dead  body  that 
must  become  the  seed  of  the  spiritual 
body.  If  cremation,  instead  of  burial, 
had  always  been  the  universal  mode  of 
disposing  of  dead  bodies,  the  argument, 
probably,  would  never  have  occurred  to 
any  one.  Certainly,  nothing  could  be 
more  irrational.  A  dead  body  is  nothing 
like  a  seed.  It  is  only  like  the  empty 
hull  of  a  seed.  A  seed  is  a  living  thing. 
It  is,  in  fact,   the  whole  embryonic  plant 

—  with  a  covering  to  nourish  and  protect 
it  during  the  first  stage  of  its  growth. 
When  that  first  stasfe  of  orowth  is  com- 
pleted,  the  outer  covering  falls  away,  and 
the  plant  stands  disclosed  to  the  sunlight 
and  the  air.  That,  in  man,  which  answers 
to  the  embryonic  plant,  is  the  spiritual 
body.  That  which  answers  to  the  outer 
wrapping  is  the  material  body.  That 
which  answers  to  the  ground  is  the  world. 

124 


The  spiritual  body  is  to  be  unfolded  from 
the  living  man,  planted  here  in  this  world 
.  at  birth,  and  not  from  his  mouldering  re-  -J 
'^  mains,  buried  in  the  ground  at  death.  '*. 
"  The  time,"  says  the  great  philosopher, 
John  Locke,  "that  man  is  in  this  world, 
affixed  to  this  earth,  is  his  being  sown,  and 
not  when,  being  dead,  he  is  put  into  the 
ground ;  as  is  evident  from  St.  Paul's  own 
words  :  For  dead  things  are  not  sown. 
Seeds  are  sown  being  alive,  and  die  not 
until  after  they  are  sown."  And  as  here 
in  this  world  is  the  sowing,  so  here  in 
this  world  must  be  the  growing.  I  do 
not  mean,  of  course,  that  the  spiritual 
must  in  this  world  reach  its  full  perfec- 
tion ;  but  here  it  must  continue  until  the 
material  body  falls  away.     Then  it  rises. 

To  all  this,  I  know,  there  are  certain 
popular  objections. 

The  first  is,  that  our  Lord's  resurrec- 
tion was  a  pattern  of  our  own,  and  that 
our  Lord,  after  His  resurrection,  appeared 
to  His  disciples  in  a  material  body.     It  is 

125 


true  that  our  Lord  appeared  to  His  dis- 
ciples in  a  material  body ;  but  it  is  not 
true  that  His  resurrection  was  a  pattern  of 
our  own.  It  was  a  pledge  of  our  own 
resurrection ;  but  in  one  respect,  at  least, 
it  certainly  was  not  a  pledge.  Our  Lord 
had  to  make  His  resurrection  manifest. 
He  had  to  prove  it  to  men's  senses. 
Men's  senses  could  not  discover  His 
spiritual  body.  It  was  necessary,  there- 
fore, that  He  should  reappear  in  material 
form.  This  He  had  claimed  the  power 
to  do.  He  had  claimed  the  power  to  lay 
down  His  life — that  is,  His  physical  life — 
and  to  take  it  up  again.  And  this  He  did. 
During  the  great  forty  days  between  His 
resurrection  and  His  ascension  He  did 
it  repeatedly  ;  and  the  last  time  with  this 
peculiarity — that,  instead  of  vanishing,  as 
at  other  times,  from  their  midst.  He  first 
rose  slowly  and  solemnly  above  them — 
thus  impressing  the  fact  upon  their  minds 
that  His  sensible  intercourse  with  them  was 
about  to  close  forever — and  then  gave  back 
126 


His  material  form  to  the  world  of  material 
things.     Our  Lord  did  not  always,  during 
those  forty  days,  appear  in  the  same  form. 
To  Mary  in  the  Garden  He  appeared  in 
one   form,    and,  in   the  afternoon   of  the 
same  day,  to  the  disciples  on  their  way  to 
Emmaus  in  another  form.     But  in  what- 
ever form  He  appeared  it  was  undeniably 
in    a  body  of  flesh  and  blood ;  and  into 
that  Kingdom  whither  He  withdrew  (both 
Scripture  and  reason  assure  us)  flesh  and 
blood    could    never    enter.      Plainly,    the 
body  of  our  Lord's  post-resurrection  ap- 
pearances was  not  His  resurrection-body, 
but  simply  what  I  may  call  His  evidential 
body.     Such  a  body  as  that  we  ourselves 
shall  not  need.      We  shall   not  need  to 
prove   our  own   resurrection.      We  shall 
not  need,  therefore,  to  return,  even  for  a 
moment,  to  the  material  condition. 

It  may  be  objected  again  that  there  is 
at  least  one  passage  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment  between    which    and   what   I   have 
been  saying  there  seems  to  be  no  possible 
127 


I 


harmony.  [  The  passage  meant  is  that  in 
which  St.  Paul  speaks  of  the  Lord's  de- 
scending from  Heaven  with  a  shout,  with 
the  voice  of  the  archangel  and  the  trump 
of  God,  the  dead  rising  from  their  graves, 
the  living  caught  up  from  the  earth,  and 
all  together  meeting  the  Lord  in  the  air. 
/  I  This  passage  was  written  by  St.  Paul  in 
"his  earlier  ministry.  It  was  written,  it 
^  \  would  seem,  before  the  writer  had  attained 
to  that  large  grasp  of  the  resurrection 
which  he  shows  in  his  argument  to  the 
Corinthians.  The  Apostle  speaks  with 
great  caution.  He  begins  with  the  words, 
**  Now  this  we  say  unto  you  by  the  word 
of  the  Lord," — meaning,  as  I  understand 
him,  not  that  he  was  about  to  speak 
by  inspiration,  but  that  he  was  about  to 
speak  without  inspiration  ;  that  he  was 
simply  going  to  repeat  the  words  of  the 
Lord  as  recorded  or  remembered  by  His 
disciples,  claiming  no  exceptional  influ- 
ence to  aid  him  in  their  interpretation. 
If  I  am  right  in  this  position, — a  position 
128 


which  has  been  taken  by  men  very  emi- 
nent in  exegesis, — then  certainly  the  ob- 
jection in  question  is  utterly  without  force. 
The  third  and  last  objection  that  I  shall 
mention  is  this — that  the  view  that  I  have 
now  been  settingr  forth  involves  the  denial 
of  the  identity  of  our  future  bodies  with 
our  present  bodies.  It  is  positively  and  L^'^ 
exactly  the  other  way.  It  is  only  the  spir- 
itual body  that  furnishes  any  shadow  of 
basis  for  the  identity  even  of  the  natural 
body.  If  the  identity  of  the  natural  body 
were  in  the  particles  at  any  time  compos- 
ing it,  then  that  identity  would  be  losing 
itself  continually  ;  for  such  particles  are 
certainly  changing.  The  truth  is,  the 
only  thing  that  identifies  your  present 
body  with  the  body  that  you  had  ten 
years  ago,  is  the  fact  that  that  was  your 
own  body,  and  that  this  is  your  own  body. 
Wherever  you  may  be,  in  whatever  world, 
your  body,  let  it  be  composed  of  whatever 
substance  it  may,  will  be  your  body ;  and 
for  this  reason  it  will    be  as  thoroughly 

9 

129 


identical  with  the  body  that  you  have  to- 
day as  the  body  that  you  have  to-day  is 
identical  with  the  body  that  you  had  ten 
years  ago.  All  this  fear  about  the  loss  of 
bodily  identity  is  an  idle  fear.  It  is  a 
thing  which  belongs  simply  to  the  realm 
of  speculation.  It  can  never  invade  the 
realm  of  fact.  When  the  mother  throws 
her  arms  around  the  boy  that  has  been 
ten  years  at  sea,  she  never  thinks  of  rais- 
ing any  question  as  to  where  he  got  his 
present  body.  Tell  her  that  it  came  from 
the  soil  and  the  air  of  the  Indies — tell  her 
that  she  never  touched  nor  saw  one  par- 
ticle of  it  before — it  makes  no  difference. 
There  is  her  boy,  and  that  is  his  body — 
just  the  same  boy  that  she  sang  to  in  his 
infancy,  and  that  she  pressed  to  her  heart 
when  he  left  her  to  cross  the  seas.  It  will 
be  quite  the  same  when  we  meet  on  the 
farther  shore  of  the  ocean  of  Time.  Cer- 
tainly, that  which  gives  identity  to  the 
body  here  cannot  be  thought  of  as  losing 
its  own  identity  there.     Speaking  for  my- 


self,  I  can  say  that,  although  the  expression 
"  the  resurrection  of  the  body  "  is  nowhere 
to  be  found  in  the  Bible,  I  believe  in  the 
resurrection  of  the  body  a  thousand  times 
more  firmly  than  I  could  have  believed  in 
it  had  I  retained  the  teaching  concern- 
ing it  which  was  instilled  into  my  mind  in 
childhood,  and  which,  as  a  student  of  the- 
ology, I  learned  in  a  more  formed  way 
from  Bishop  Pearson  on  the  Creed.  The  /^ 
old  theology  of  this  subject  cannot  stand. 
It  is  bound  to  go.  It  is  going  fast.  The 
newer  doctrine  is  making  its  way  with  all 
schools  of  thought,  with  all  communions, 
with  all  creeds.  It  has  invaded  even  the 
Roman  Church  itself.  Indeed,  an  Engf- 
lish  Romanist  has  furnished  one  of  the 
most  important  of  the  books  written  in  its 
explanation  and  defense — a  work  in  which 
the  author  says  :  "  When  the  idea  of  the  fs^ 
spiritual  body  was  first  suggested  to  me, 
it  broke  on  my  mind  like  a  flash  of  heav- 
enly light ;  and  now  that  I  have  brooded 
over  it  for  years,  it  seems  to  me  the  true 

131 


and  only  solution  of  many  scriptural,  theo- 
logical, and  scientific  difficulties.  It  dis- 
places no  stone  in  the  edifice  of  Christian 
doctrine,  but  gives  unity  and  consistency 
to  the  entire  building.  It  breaks  through 
the  doors  closed  against  it,  and  stands  in 
the  midst  of  other  doctrines,  as  Christ,  in 
His  spiritual  body,  stood  in  the  midst  of 
His  disciples,  saying, '  Peace  be  unto  you.' " 
But  this  doctrine  brings  not  only  convic- 
tion to  the  understanding.  It  brings  also 
comfort  to  the  heart  —  banishing  forever 
that  dreary  dream  that  ages,  perhaps,  on 
ages  must  roll  by  before  we  can  know 
again,  as  we  know  them  here,  the  loved 
ones  who  have  passed  within  the  veil. 
And  it  brings,  besides,  the  most  solemn 
of  all  motives  for  life.  To  some  extent, 
we  know,  even  the  outer  body  reveals 
spiritual  character.  The  spiritual  body 
will  reveal  It  perfectly.  The  spiritual  body 
will  contain  the  whole  record  of  our  lives 
— of  which  kind  they  were.  That  record 
we   are    making   now.     That  record  will 


constitute  the  books  out  of  which  we  shall 
be  judged  —  yea,  out  of  which  we  shall 
judge  ourselves.  Let  no  man  deceive 
himself.  Let  no  one  think  that  he  can 
long  deceive  others.  "There  is  nothing 
hid  that  shall  not  be  made  manifest." 


133 


THE  RESURRECTION-WORLD 

"lyirHEN  the  light  of  the  first  Easter 
^  '  dawned,  the  disciples  had  already 
yielded  to  their  foes  the  great  point  in 
question.  What  the  Master  had  told 
them  about  His  rising  from  the  dead, 
they  had  never  clearly  understood  ;  and 
now,  it  would  seem,  they  had  dismissed 
it  from  mind.  The  spectacle  of  the  dead 
body  had  proved  too  much  for  their  faith. 
They  were  utterly  overwhelmed  w^ith  dis- 
appointment and  sorrow.  They  had  lost 
all  hope.  They  had  lost  everything  but 
memory  and  love.  "  On  the  first  day  of 
the  week,  very  early  in  the  morning," 
came  the  faithful  Galilean  women  to  the 
sepulchre,  bearing  sweet  spices  and  oint- 
ment to  anoint  the  body  —  a  proof  not 
134 


more  of  their  devotedness  than  of  their 
despair.  But  spices  and  ointment  had 
been  brought  in  vain.  The  stone  they 
found  rolled  away  —  the  sepulchre  empty 
—  and  from  two  angels  robed  in  white 
they  heard  the  strange,  glad  greeting  ; 
"  Why  seek  ye  the  living  among  the 
dead  ?  He  is  not  here,  but  is  risen." 
Quickly  the  tidings  sped  to  the  other 
disciples.  The  excitement  among  them 
was  intense.  It  was  indescribable.  They 
could  hardly  believe  for  joy.  In  fact, 
they  could  not  believe  until  the  Master, 
by  repeated  personal  appearings,  had 
compelled  belief.  Of  such  appearings, 
five  He  granted  as  on  this  day  ;  while 
afterward,  for  forty  days.  He  remained  in 
intimate  intercourse  with  His  followers, 
being  seen,  on  one  occasion,  by  as  many 
as  five  hundred  of  them  at  once. 

If  there  is  anything  in  this  world  that 
is  certain,  it  is  that  the  disciples  believed 
that  their  Master  had  risen  from  the 
dead.       They   believed   it   with   as   little 

135 


doubt  as  they  believed  in  their  own  exist- 
ence. Were  the  truth  of  this  assertion 
challenged,  I  should  appeal,  in  the  first 
place,  to  the  testimony  of  the  Gospels. 
Were  it  denied  that  the  Gospels  were 
written  in  the  lifetime  of  the  Apostles,  I 
should  pass  on  at  once  —  without  stop- 
ping to  show  the  groundlessness  of  such 
denial — to  the  unimpeachable  testimony 
of  St.  Paul.  About  the  time  when  St. 
Paul  lived  and  labored,  there  is  no  ques- 
tion. He  was  converted  in  the  year  of 
our  Lord  41.  He  wrote  his  first  Epistle 
to  the  Corinthians  in  the  year  57.  The 
genuineness  of  that  Epistle  is  undisputed. 
It  has  never  been  disputed  by  any  one. 
In  that  Epistle  St,  Paul  says  :  "  I  declare 
unto  you,  first  of  all,  that  which  I  also 
received,"  and  then  goes  on  to  give  the 
main  facts  in  the  history  of  the  resur- 
rection, just  as  they  are  given  in  the 
Gospels. 

Now,  remembering  that  this  testimony 
was   something   that   St.    Paul    had    not 
136 


evolved  out  of  his  own  consciousness,  but 
had  "received," — remembering  also  that 
St.  Paul  was  personally  acquainted  with 
the  other  Apostles,  that  he  had  met 
them  all  at  the  Council  at  Jerusalem,  and 
that  he  had  been  a  fellow-laborer  with  St. 
Peter  at  Antioch, —  it  becomes  as  certain, 
I  say  again,  as  anything  in  this  world 
can  be,  that  the  Apostles  all  believed  in 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  as  a  most  literal 
fact.  It  was  to  the  resurrection  of  Christ 
that  they  were  wont,  on  all  occasions,  to 
make  appeal.  It  was  to  the  resurrection 
of  Christ  that  they  were  wont  to  point  as 
to  the  very  keystone  in  the  whole  stu- 
pendous arch  of  Gospel  truth.  They  put 
it  forth  as  their  peculiar  claim  to  a  hear- 
ing that  they  had  seen  the  risen  Lord. 
When  a  successor  to  the  traitor  Judas 
was  to  be  chosen,  they  insisted  on  this 
as  an  indispensable  qualification  for  the 
office  —  that  he  should  be  one  whc  could 
bear  the  same  witness  with  them.  They 
showed  their  belief  in  the  resurrection  in 

137 


this  way,  and  they  showed  it  in  other 
ways.  They  showed  it  in  their  constant 
observance  of  this  Holy  Sacrament  that 
we  are  about  to  celebrate — an  observance 
that  spans  the  whole  gulf  of  years  be- 
tween them  and  us,  and  that  without  the 
resurrection  would  be  as  utterly  mean- 
ingless as  it  would  be  without  the  cruci- 
fixion. They  showed  their  belief  in  the 
resurrection  in  the  fact  that,  Jews  though 
they  were,  with  all  the  reverence  of  Jews 
for  the  commandments  and  ordinances  of 
the  Law,  they  at  once  transferred  their 
Sabbath  observance  from  the  last  day  of 
the  week  to  the  first  —  connecting  it  no 
longer  with  the  deliverance  of  Israel  from 
the  bondage  of  Egypt,  but  with  the  de- 
liverance of  all  mankind  from  the  bond- 
age of  death.  They  showed  their  belief 
in  the  resurrection  in  the  very  zeal  with 
which  they  began  at  once  to  plant  the 
Church  —  one  day,  dispirited,  fearful,  aim- 
less, hiding  away  in  an  upper  room ;  a 
few  days  later  reappearing  in  the  Temple 
138 


overflowing  with  hope  and  joy — full  of 
plans  for  work  —  with  a  courage  that 
could  look  death  in  the  face  and  not 
falter. 

It  may  indeed  be  said — it  has  been  said, 
in  fact — that  the  Apostles  lived  in  an  un- 
critical age,  and  were  themselves  men  of 
uncritical  minds.     There  was  in  this  case 
no  need  of  the  critical  mind.     There  was 
need  of  nothing,  besides  honesty  of  pur- 
pose,   but   eyes   and   ears   and   memory. 
Certainly    these    disciples    were    critical 
enouo-h  to  know  their  Master  when  they 
saw  Him.     Certainly  they  could  not  have 
been  persuaded  that,  for  forty  days  after 
His    crucifixion,     they    had    seen    Him, 
touched    Him,    talked    with    Him,    been 
taught  by  Him,  if  nothing  of  all  this  had 
been  true.     The  delusion  theory  is  utterly 
inadmissible.     It  is  weak.      It  is  puerile. 
It  is  absurd.     St.    Paul  meets  it  in  this 
way  :  "If  Christ  be  not  risen,  then  are  we 
false  witnesses  before  God."     "  Either  our 
declarations   concerning  the  resurrection 


'is 


are  true  or  we  stand  before  God  perjured 
men.  There  is  no  middle  ground.  We 
have  not  been  deceived  in  this  matter ; 
and  whether  or  not  we  have  been  trying 
to  deceive  others — let  our  own  lives  and 
teachings,  to  say  nothing  of  the  testimony 
of  hundreds  of  others  still  living,  settle 
that."  The  ready  test  of  false  assumption 
is  found  in  the  inconsistencies  to  which  it 
leads.  Any  false  theory  of  facts  always 
throws  the  facts  themselves  into  irrecon- 
cilable confusion.  It  is  so  in  this  case. 
Set  out  with  a  denial  that  Christ  rose 
from  the  dead,  and  then  His  life,  His 
character.  His  teaching,  the  testimony  of 
His  disciples  concerning  Him,  His  own 
testimony  concerning  Himself,  at  once  in- 
volve the  mind  in  difficulties  more  per- 
plexing— I  may  safely  say  a  thousand-fold 
— than  any  that  confront  belief.  "  The 
man,"  said  Dr.  South,  "who  would  not 
believe  the  resurrection  upon  a  state- 
ment of  its  claims,  would  not  believe  it 
if  he  himself  should  rise  from  the  dead." 
140 


De  Wette,  the  leader  of  German  Rational- 
ism in  the  first  half  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, wrote  and  published,  the  year  before 
he  died,  an  essay  which  took  the  world  by 
surprise.  The  surprise  was  occasioned  by 
these  words :  "  The  fact  of  the  resurrec- 
tion, although  a  darkness  which  cannot 
be  dissipated  rests  upon  the  way  and  man- 
ner of  it,  cannot  itself  be  called  into 
doubt."  A  fact  about  which  such  a  mind 
as  De  Wette's,  after  studying  the  matter 
for  a  lifetime,  not  only  critically  but  scep- 
tically, could  entertain  no  doubt,  may 
well  be  regarded  as  resting  on  sufificient 
evidence. 

As  to  "the  darkness"  that  De  Wette 
speaks  of  as  resting  "on  the  way  and 
manner  of  the  resurrection,"  that  cer- 
tainly is  something  that  men  have  made 
for  themselves.  They  have  assumed,  as 
De  Wette  himself  seems  to  have  assumed, 
that  the  body  in  which  our  Lord  ap- 
peared to  His  disciples  was  His  true 
resurrection-body.  "  A  material  body," 
141 


it  is  said,  "  endowed  with  spiritual  proper- 
ties." This  assumption  at  once  throws 
all  the  facts  of  the  case  into  hopeless  con- 
fusion. Upon  what  I  feel  very  sure  is 
the  plain  truth  of  this  matter,  I  can  at 
the  time  only  touch.  Every  man,  even  in 
this  world,  has,  besides  the  material  body 
which  he  knows  of  through  the  natural 
senses,  a  spiritual  body,  which  until,  at 
death,  his  spiritual  senses  shall  be  opened, 
he  cannot  directly  know  of  in  any  way. 
The  true  body  of  our  Lord's  resurrection 
was  His  spiritual  body.  But  because  natu- 
ral faculties  cannot  discern  any  spiritual 
thing,  our  Lord  resumed,  from  time  to 
time,  during  the  great  forty  days,  the  ma- 
terial condition — reclothed  Himself  with 
a  material  bod)' — putting  such  body  on 
and  off  at  will,  just  as  He  had  claimed 
the  power  to  do — doing  this,  not  as  any 
essential  part  of  His  resurrection,  but 
simply  to  make  His  disciples  sure  that 
He  had  risen. 

It  may  be  said  that,  in  this  view,  we 
142 


are  confronted  with  quite  as  great  a  mys- 
tery as  that  of  "  a  material  body  endowed 
with    spiritual    properties."      Let    it    be 
granted.     But  there  is  this  difference  :  in 
this  view  we  are  confronted  with  a  mys- 
tery, and  nothing  more ;  while  the  idea  of 
*'  a  material  body  endowed  with  spiritual 
properties  "  confronts  us  with  a  downright 
contradiction  in  terms.     Did  we  refuse  to 
accept  facts  simply  on  the  ground  of  their 
involving  mystery,  we  should  accept  noth- 
ing at  all — not  even,  or  rather,  least  of 
all,  the  fact  of  our  own  existence  ;  but 
contradictions  we  can  accept  only  on  the 
condition   of   stolidly   refusing   to   think. 
The  root  of  the  whole  difficulty  in  this 
question  of  the  resurrection-body — of  our 
Lord's  resurrection-body  and  of  our  own 
—  lies  in  a  failure  to  grasp  the  truth  that 
the   spiritual   can    be   substantial.       Ask 
for  a  definition  of  the  spiritual,  and  eight 
men  out  of  ten,  perhaps,  will  get  no  fur- 
ther than  to  say  that  it  is  the  immaterial — 
"  the  immaterial "  meaning  that  which  is 
143 


not  matter,  a  mere  negation.  Spiritual 
body  thus  comes  to  mean  the  negation  of 
body.  And  so  as  regards  the  whole  spir- 
itual world,  I  am  satisfied  that  for  multi- 
tudes of  men  to-day  the  supreme  difficulty 
in  believing  in  any  resurrection  is  not 
the  question,  "  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live 
again?"  but,  "  If  a  man  live  again,  where 
shall  he  find  a  world  to  live  in — a  world 
real,  and  yet  not  material  ? "  Modern 
thought,  in  its  deeper  reaches,  has  been 
helping  us  to  answer  this  question.  It 
has  been  showing  us  that  all  that  we  call 
material  is  in  reality  but  phenomenal — 
the  joint  product  of  that  Divine  energy, 
on  the  one  hand,  which  we  apprehend, 
under  various  forms,  as  Force,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  the  constitutive  powers  of 
creature  mind.  Modern  thought  has  thus 
been  showing  us  that,  in  whatever  sense 
matter  may  be  called  substance,  in  that 
same  sense  precisely  there  may  be — nay, 
must  be — as  many  different  kinds  of  sub- 
stance as  there  are  possible  modes  of  per- 
144 


ception — all  conceivably  coexisting  in  the 
order  of  time,  and  yet  bearing  no  sort  of 
relation  to  one  another  in  the  order  of 
space.  Our  only  mode  of  perception  here 
in  this  world  is  through  the  natural  senses  ; 
matter  thus  becomes  the  only  substance 
that  we  can  possibly  perceive.  But  if  man 
be  a  spiritual  being,  he  must,  of  necessity, 
have  spiritual  senses  ;  and  when  these  are 
freed  from  their  material  wrapping,  he 
must  perceive  another  substance — another 
world. 

Perhaps  the  most  significant  book  that 
has  appeared  the  present  year — the  most 
significant,  I  mean,  among  books  touching 
upon  matters  of  religious  belief — is  Canon 
Maccoll's  "  Christianity  in  Relation  to 
Science  and  Moi^als,''  and  I  have  found 
this  work  so  strikingly  confirmatory  of  my 
own  teaching  as  regards  the  subject  now 
in  hand  that  I  shall  venture  to  quote  from 
it  a  single  passage  :  "  If  we  are  to  believe 
the  Bible,"  says  the  author,  "the  spiritual 
world  is  not  a  region  far  away  in  space, 

lO 

I4S 


but  a  higher  plane  of  being,  permeating 
the  natural  world,  and  requiring  spiritual 
faculties  to  apprehend  it.  We  are  thus 
in  the  condition  of  a  man  born  deaf  and 
blind  into  this  world  of  solid  matter.  He 
is  in  the  midst  of  two  worlds  of  which 
he  knows  next  to  nothing — the  world  of 
colors  and  the  world  of  sounds.  For  him 
the  abounding  beauties  of  nature  do  not 
exist.  He  cannot  reach  them  by  travel- 
ling through  space.  He  might  visit  every 
world  in  the  visible  universe  in  search  of 
them,  but  his  search  would  be  in  vain. 
What  he  needs  is  not  a  change  in  his  sur- 
roundings, but  a  change  in  himself.  Open 
his  eyes  and  ears,  and  then,  without 
any  change  of  place,  he  finds  himself  in- 
troduced into  the  worlds  which  he  had 
vainly  sought  by  changing  his  environ- 
ment. This,"  adds  Canon  Maccoll,  "  is 
the  kind  of  relation  in  which  Holy  Scrip- 
ture represents  us  as  standing  towards  the 
spiritual  world."  The  meaning  of  this 
author  is,  in  other  words,  that  what  divides 
146 


the  world  in  which  we  arc  and  the  world 
in  which  we  shall  be,  is  simply  two  dif- 
ferent modes  of  perception — two  different 
sets  of  senses.  We  stand  in  the  spiritual 
world  to-day  as  really  as  we  ever  shall — 
only  we  stand  there  within  fleshly  masks. 
When  the  masks  fall  from  us,  we  shall 
have  no  pilgrimage  to  make  to  see  the 
world  of  spirits ;  the  world  of  spirits  will 
be  all  around  us — as  real,  as  natural,* as 
stable  as  this  world  of  matter  is  to  us  here 
and  now. 

Now  in  this  view  we  can  see  the  reason 
why  St.  Paul  wrote  to  the  Corinthians 
that  "  flesh  and  blood  could  not  inherit 
the  kingdom  of  God."  A  material  body 
has  no  place  in  a  spiritual  world.  A 
material  body  could  no  more  be  per- 
ceived in  a  spiritual  world  than  a  spir- 
itual body  can  be  perceived  in  this 
material  world.  It  is  not  rationally  con- 
ceivable that  our  Lord's  material  body 
was  the  body  of  His  resurrection.  Nor  is 
it  rationally  conceivable  that  our  material 

147 


bodies  are  to  be  the  bodies  of  our  resur- 
rection. The  notion  of  the  resurrection 
of  the  flesh  at  the  end  of  the  world  was 
not  of  Christian  origin.  It  originated 
with  Zoroaster,  who  taught  it  a  thousand 
years  before  the  time  of  Christ ;  and  it 
was  imported  by  the  Jews  from  the  East. 
Our  Lord  condemned  it,  positively  and 
pointedly.  To  Martha,  He  proclaimed 
that  the  resurrection  was  not  something 
to  take  place  at  some  distant  future,  but 
a  present  fact.  To  the  Sadducees  He  de- 
clared that,  if  Abraham  and  Isaac  and 
Jacob  were  still  alive,  that  settled  the 
question  of  the  resurrection.  If  they  were 
still  alive  in  the  world  of  spirits,  that  was 
proof  of  their  having  risen  to  that  world 
from  this.  Our  Lord's  conception  of  the 
resurrection — as  good  Bishop  Newton,  Dr. 
Timothy  Dwight,  and  others  have  been 
at  pains  to  show — was  simply  that  of  the 
rising  of  the  spiritual  out  of  the  material. 
He  made  no  mention  of  a  resurrection- 
body.     He  does  not  seem  to  have  thought 


it  necessary.     He   never  seems  to  have 
entertained  the  idea  that  man  could  exist 
without  a  body.     All  the  teaching  that  we 
find  in   the    New    Testament   about  the 
resurrection-body  is  from  St.   Paul ;  and 
St.  Paul's  teaching  as  to  this  point  is  clear 
and  ringing.     It  is,  that  in  the  resurrection 
we  are  to  have  bodies ;  that  such  bodies 
are  to  be  not  material,  but  spiritual ;  that 
they  are  not  to  be  miraculously  re-created 
at  the  end  of  time,  but  developed  within 
the  living  man  here  and  now,  by  a  process 
as   purely  normal  as  the  unfolding  of  a 
plant  from  its  parent  seed  ;  and,  what  is 
more,  that  our  resurrection-bodies  are  to 
be  thoroughly  identical  with  our  bodies 
here — identical,  that  is,  in  the  same  sense 
that  our  bodies  now  are  identical  with  the 
bodies  that  we  had  ten  or  twenty  years 
ao-o,  not  identical  in  substance,  but  iden- 
tical  as  being  the  outcome,  the  expression, 
of  the  identifying  principle  within  us.     To 
my   mind    it    is    inconceivable   that   the 
identity  of  the  body,  or  the  possibility  of 
149 


recognition  of  friend  by  friend,  should  any 
more  be  lost  in  the  next  world  than  in  this. 
I  am  well  aware  that  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament passages  may  be  found  which, 
superficially  interpreted,  would  seem  to 
make  against  what  I  have  now  been  set- 
ting forth.  The  characteristic  of  all 
such  passages  is  that  they  are  conceived 
in  the  apocalyptic  style  —  a  style  in  which, 
instead  of  literal  descriptions,  we  have 
dramatic  pictures.  Pictures,  of  course, 
cannot  represent  events  as  occurring  in 
temporal  succession  ;  and  hence  it  is  that, 
in  the  representations  of  the  resurrection 
and  the  judgment,  we  find  events  which 
were  to  occur  to  '*  every  man  in  his  own 
order"  grouped  together  as  occurring  to 
all  men  at  one  and  the  same  time.  These 
pictures  certainly  contain  no  error.  In 
past  ages,  perhaps,  it  mattered  little 
even  if  they  were  mistaken  for  literal  de- 
scription. But  in  such  an  age  as  ours  — 
when  the  spirit  of  inquiry  is  so  thoroughly 
aroused  —  such   a   mistake  might  easily, 

150 


in  the  case  of  many  a  mind,  prove  fatal  to 

belief. 

The  teaching  of  this  sermon,  let  me  say 
in  closing,  would  in  no  way  mar  any 
feature  of  the  Faith  as  handed  down  from 
age  to  age  in  the  Church's  venerable 
Creeds.  It  would  leave  the  grand  and 
solemn  verities  of  resurrection  and  judg- 
ment all  untouched  —  only  it  would  give 
them  a  firmer  hold  upon  intelligent  con- 
viction. It  would  not  even  affect  the 
truth  of  what  is  called  the  Intermediate 
Abode ;  it  would  simply  make  the  Inter- 
mediate Abode,  instead  of  a  place  where 
spirits  idly  wait  for  judgment,  a  place  of 
training,  of  education,  of  preparation  for 
God's  full  disclosures.  It  would  mar,  I  say, 
no  feature  of  the  Faith.  It  would  simply 
remind  us  the  more  impressively  of  what 
too  often  we  forget, —  of  the  close  and  vital 
bond  that  links  our  daily  life  in  this  world 
of  shadows  with  the  eternal  realities  that 
shall  stand  revealed  when  the  shadows 
shall  be  gone.     It  would  simply  fix  it  in 

151 


our  convictions  that  every  thought  we 
think,  every  feeHng  we  cherish,  every 
motive  to  which  we  yield,  is  even  now 
being  woven  into  our  spiritual  vesture, 
and  thus  recorded  in  all  within  us  that  is 
deathless.  Such  would  be  its  fruit.  If 
the  fruit  be  evil,  then  cannot  the  tree  be 
good ;  but  if  the  fruit  be  good,  it  can 
hardly  be  that  the  tree  is  evil. 


152 


THE    HOLY  TRINITY 

I  AM  to  speak  this  morning,  as  I  have 
always  spoken  on  the  occasion  of  this 
festival,  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Trinity. 

That   this    doctrine    involves    a    great 
mystery  must  certainly  be  admitted.     But 
there  is  nothing  in  that  to  make  it  incred- 
ible.     If  we  were  to  believe  only  what 
was  not   mysterious,   we  should   not  be- 
lieve anything.     We  should  not  believe  in 
the  existence  of  a  world  around  us.     We 
should  not  believe  even  in  our  own  exist- 
ence.    But  in  truth  it  is  not  mystery  that 
ever  perplexes  any  one.    We  are  perplexed 
only  when  we  try  to  accept  as  equally  true 
things   which   we   cannot   reconcile   with 
one   another.     There    is   nothing   in  the 
mere  mystery  of  the  Trinity  at  which  any 
153 


man  should  stumble  —  nothing,  in  fact,  at 
which  any  man  ever  has  stumbled.  Where 
there  is  stumbling  at  all,  it  is  not  because 
the  doctrine  is  so  mysterious,  but  because 
it  is  thought  to  involve  contradictions 
which  are  so  plain. 

What  the  Church  teaches,  and  has 
always  taught,  as  touching  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  is  this  :  that  there  are  three 
Divine  Persons,  but  that  the  fact,  that 
the  entire  Godhead  —  i.  ^.,  the  substance, 
or  nature,  of  God  —  is  in  each  of  those 
Persons,  without  any  inequality  or  differ- 
ence, makes  the  three  Persons  but  one 
God  —  in  other  words,  that  God  is  one 
as  to  His  substance,  but  three  as  to  His 
manner  of  subsisting. 

That  the  same  nature  in  its  entirety 
can  at  the  same  time  belong  to  more  than 
one  person  is  a  fact  which  admits  of  no 
question.  It  is  a  fact  which  is  demonstrated 
in  the  very  existence  of  man  —  in  the  ex- 
istence, I  mean,  of  man  as  man.  In  this 
fact  lies  the  whole  mystery  of  being  —  the 

154 


mystery  of  God's  being,  and  the  mystery 
of  our  own.     The  human  perso7is  upon 
this    globe    are    numbered    by   hundreds 
of  miUions ;  but  not  so  the  nature  which 
makes  these  persons  human.     There  are 
not    even   two   human   natures.     Human 
nature  is  but  one.     It  is  never  new  created, 
but  always  communicated  in  the  mystery 
ofgeniture — always  "begotten,  not  made." 
And  always  it  remains  entire.     One  per- 
son has  not  one  fraction  of  it  and  another 
person  another  fraction,  but  in  each  per- 
son it  is  as  whole  and  undivided  as  if  it 
were  in  that  person  only.     And  thus,  I 
believe,  in  the  coming  into  life  of  every 
child  of  man,  we  behold  the  shadow  of 
that  mystery  by  which  the  Son  is  eternally 
begotten  of  the  Father.      It   is   not  true 
that  the    idea   of    Fatherhood   has   been 
transferred,    by   way   of    figure,    to    God 
from  man.      The  truth  is,  rather,  that  the 
whole    relation    of    Fatherhood    is   but  a 
reflection  in  man  of  that  which   subsists 
eternally  in  God. 

155 


You  think,  perhaps,  that  my  illustra- 
tion is  not  fortunate.  You  would  tell  me, 
perhaps,  that  any  three  persons  among 
men,  however  they  may  have  one  and 
the  same  undivided  substance  or  nature, 
are  not,  after  all,  one  man,  but  three  men. 
I  know,  but  the  two  cases  are  not  by 
any  means  the  same.  God  is  every  way 
perfect.  Man  is  every  way  imperfect. 
Perfection  is  always  equal  to  itself,  and 
therefore  must  always  be  one  with  it- 
self. In  imperfection,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  must  always  be  diversity.  In  imper- 
fection, unity  is  impossible.  The  thoughts 
of  a  perfect  person  must  always  be  per- 
fect thoughts,  and  the  actions  of  a  perfect 
person  must  always  be  perfect  actions. 
To  such  a  person,  any  thoughts  other 
than  those  which  he  actually  thinks,  and 
any  actions  other  than  those  which  he 
actually  wills,  would  be  impossible.  It 
must  follow,  of  course,  that  if  there  were 
other  perfect  persons,  the  thoughts  and 
the  actions  of  all  would,  in  the  same 
156  \ 


circumstances,  be  the  same.  In  one  word, 
all  these  perfect  persons,  while  retaining 
each  his  personal  distinction,  would  be, 
intellectually  and  morally,  as  well  as  in 
substance  or  nature,  one.  This  is  what 
I  mean  in  saying  that  perfection  is  always 
equal  to  itself,  and  therefore  must  always 
be  one  with  itself.  And  when  I  say  that 
in  imperfection  unity  is  impossible,  I 
mean  that  no  two  imperfect  persons  — 
to  say  nothing  of  a  whole  race  of  per- 
sons—  could  be  found  always  to  think, 
and  feel,  and  act  alike.  If  it  were  other- 
wise,—  if  all  men  had,  in  the  same  cir- 
cumstances, but  one  thought,  one  feeling, 
one  will, —  then  we  might  speak  of  the 
unity  of  man  in  a  multiplicity  of  persons, 
just  as  we  now  speak  of  the  unity  of 
God  in  a  triplicity  of  persons, — and  when 
we  spoke  thus,  I  believe  that  we  should 
be  speaking  properly.  Of  course,  in  the 
case  of  men,  however  perfect,  there  would 
remain  not  only  personal  distinction,  but 
bodily  separation, — spatial  individuation, 

157 


as  the  philosophers  would  phrase  it, — but 
this  element,  in  our  thoughts  of  God, 
must  be  excluded. 

What  I  have  now  been  saying,  I  have 
said  with  a  distinct  purpose.  The  most 
serious,  because  the  most  practical,  objec- 
tion ever  brought  against  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  is  that  it  would  destroy  the 
unity  of  the  Godhead.  This  was  the  real 
secret  of  the  great  Unitarian  movement 
led  on  by  Channing  in  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  real  point 
against  which  that  movement  was  di- 
rected was  not  the  belief  that  there  are 
three  distinct  persons  in  the  one  God- 
head, but  against  the  belief  which  made 
two  of  these  persons  not  only  personally 
distinct,  but  morally  different.  Calvinism 
did,  in  the  minds  of  those  who  embraced 
it,  destroy  the  unity  of  the  Godhead.  It 
did  it  unconsciously,  but  it  did  it  effectu- 
ally. It  made  the  Father  one  kind  of  a 
God,  and  the  Son  a  God  of  another  kind. 
It  pictured  the  Father  with  no  lines  in 
158 


His  face  but  those  of  pitiless  justice.  In 
that  system,  the  Son  had  to  die  for  the 
world  before  the  Father  could  be  induced 
to  love  it ;  and  even  then  the  Father 
loved  the  world,  or,  rather,  a  part  of  it, 
not  because  there  was  anything  in  it 
worth  loving,  but  because  the  Son  had 
died.  For  this  consideration  He  con- 
sented to  elect  certain  persons  to  eternal 
life  —  in  His  own  good  time  awakening 
them  from  their  slumber  of  death  by  a 
call  which  they  could  not  resist,  and  en- 
abling them  to  persevere  in  their  Chris- 
tian course  by  a  grace  from  which  they 
could  not  fall  away.  The  rest,  He  left 
to  stumble  on  to  their  merited  doom.  It 
was  this  system  against  which  the  Uni- 
tarianism  of  Channing  and  his  friends 
was  an  earnest  protest.  I  honor  those 
men,  not  for  rejecting  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity — God  forbid!  —  but 
for  refusing  to  accept  the  theological 
views  with  which  good,  but  mistaken, 
men  had  contrived  to  make  that  doctrine 
159 


seem  identical.  The  great  strength  of 
the  Channing  movement  lay  in  the  errors 
of  the  system  against  which  it  reacted. 
With  those  errors  everywhere  modified, 
if  not  yet  everywhere  removed,  the  move- 
ment has  ceased  to  be  aggressive.  It 
has  come  to  a  standstill.  I  believe  that 
if  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  had  been 
presented  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  as  it  has  been  presented  in 
our  own  day,  that  movement  would  never 
have  been  inaugurated.  It  is  strange 
that  occasion  for  such  a  movement  should 
ever  have  been  given.  Certainly  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  as  held  by  the 
Church,  and  as  we  believe  it  is  taught  in 
Holy  Scripture,  is  decisive  enough  as 
against  the  Calvinistic  tritheism.  That 
doctrine  is  not  that  the  Son  is  of  a  different 
mind  from  the  Father,  but  that  He  is  the 
express  image  of  the  Father  —  that  He 
came  into  the  world  to  declare  the  Fa- 
ther. It  teaches,  not  that  the  Son  died 
to  get  the  Father  to  love  the  world,  but 
1 60 


that  the  Father  *'  so  loved  the  world  that 
He  gave  His  Son  to  die  for  it."  It 
teaches  that  we  are  saved,  not  simply 
by  Christ's  throwing  the  mantle  of  His 
merits  over  us,  but  by  His  putting  His 
own  love,  and  truth,  and  purity,  and  peace 
within  us. 

Certainly,  in  all  this  teaching  there  is 
nothing  to  destroy  the  unity  of  the  God- 
head. The  Scripture  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  I  repeat,  does  not  destroy  the 
unity  of  the  Godhead.  So  far  from  that, 
it  establishes  the  unity  of  the  Godhead. 
It  takes  more  than  a  unit  to  make  a 
unity.  In  a  God  who  should  be  simply 
uni-personal,  there  could  be  nothing  more 
than  a  bare  and  barren  unicity.  This  last 
word  I  borrow  from  Coleridge,  a  writer 
who  says  (in  his  Aids  to  Refiedioii)'.  "  I 
am  clearly  convinced  that  the  scriptural 
and  only  true  idea  of  God  will,  in  its 
development,  be  found  to  involve  the 
idea  of  the  Trinity."     This  testimony  of 

Coleridge   is  substantially  the  testimony 
II 

i6i 


of  the  profoundest  and  clearest  minds  that 
have  given  the  matter  their  earnest  study. 
It  is  well  known  that  Schelling,  in  his 
latest  years,  renounced  his  dreary  Pan- 
theism to  rest  upon  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  It  is  well  known,  also,  that  upon 
this  doctrine  as  its  foundation  Hegel 
built  the  whole  vast  superstructure  of  his 
philosophical  system ;  and  to  this  day 
the  entire  Hegelian  school  —  however 
they  may  differ  as  to  other  points  —  are 
at  one  in  this :  that  to  conceive  of  God  as 
personal  at  all,  He  must  be  conceived  of, 
not  as  a  unit,  but  as  a  Trinity-in-unity. 

I  know,  indeed,  that  this  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  does  not  ask  to  be  received 
on  the  ground  of  its  inherent  reasonable- 
ness. If  it  did,  it  could  speak  only  to 
the  educated  few.  It  asks  to  be  received 
on  the  ground  of  the  authority  of  Him 
who  openly  revealed  it,  an  authority 
resting  not  upon  the  evidence  of  abstract 
argument,  but  of  the  demonstrated,  his- 
torical fact  —  a  kind  of  evidence  which 
162 


any  man  can  judge  of.  But  though  it 
asks  it  not,  it  is  receiving,  and  is,  I  be- 
lieve, to  receive  still  more  and  more,  the 
willing  homage  of  thoughtful  minds  to  its 
own  profound  self-evidence.  I  believe 
that  this  very  doctrine,  which  little  or 
unlearned  minds  have  so  long  derided,  is 
yet  to  take  its  place  among  the  most  con- 
vincing evidences  of  the  truth  of  the  Son 
of  God — that  the  day  will  dawn  upon  this 
earth  when  as  Faith  joins  in  the  Thrice 
Holy  of  the  Angels'  cry,  Philosophy,  with 
uplifted  hands,  and  calm,  adoring  gaze, 
will  take  up  the  grand  ascription  of  the 
ages,  and  give  to  God  the  glory  due  His 
triune  name  of  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Ghost. 


163 


THE  TRIUMPHAL  ENTRY 

If  thou  hadst  known,  even  thou,  at  least  in  this  thy  day, 
the  things  which  belong  unto  thy  peace!  but  now  they  are 
hid  from  thine  eyes. —  St.  Luke  xix.  42. 

AX7"E   commemorate  to-day  —  the  first 
'  '       day  in  Holy  Week  —  our  Lord's 
triumphal  entry  into  the  Holy  City. 

The  day  before  this  triumphal  entry, 
our  Lord  arrived  at  Bethany ;  and  there 
he  accepted  an  invitation  to  a  feast  at  the 
house  of  Simon  the  Leper.  With  Him,  at 
the  feast,  sat  Lazarus — whom,  a  little  while 
before.  He  had  called  back  from  the  dead. 
Jerusalem  —  only  about  two  miles  from 
Bethany  —  was  at  this  time  filled  with  the 
pilgrims  who  had  come  from  every  quar- 
ter of  the  world  to  take  part  in  the 
approaching  Passover  ;  and  no  sooner  was 
it  known  that  Jesus  and  Lazarus  were  at 
Bethany  than  multitudes  began  to  pour 
164 


out  of  the  city  to  see  them.  And  again, 
the  next  day,  when  our  Lord  and  His  dis- 
ciples were  on  the  way  to  Jerusalem,  "much 
people,"  it  is  written,  "took  branches  of 
palm  trees,  and  went  forth  to  meet  Him, 
and  cried  Hosanna  ;  Blessed  is  the  King 
that  Cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord." 

No  one  can  fail  to  remark  a  very  strik- 
ing contrast  here  with  the  whole  tenor  of 
our  Lord's  previous  life.  Before,  we  find 
Him  retiring  from  the  public  gaze  — 
avoiding  the  homage  of  the  crowd  —  with- 
drawing Himself  from  those  who  would 
make  Him  king.  —  Now  all  is  changed. 
He  no  longer  refuses  the  title  of  King  :  He 
accepts  it.  He  is  even  at  pains  to  assume 
something  of  the  outward  state  of  royalty. 
Can  we  divine  the  reason  ?  Events  were 
at  hand  which  it  was  necessary  to  His 
cause  in  the  world  that  the  world  should 
know.  It  was  necessary  to  concentrate 
upon  Himself  the  attention  of  the  whole 
Jewish  nation  —  to  make  all,  unwilling  or 
willing,  His  witnesses.      His  triumph  was 

165 


not  for  Himself,  but  for  others.  For  Him 
it  was  no  triumph.  For  Him,  in  all  that 
homage,  there  was  no  gladness.  As  the 
long  procession  began  to  wind  down  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  and  the  city,  with  its 
temple,  and  palaces,  and  towers,  flashed 
upon  the  view.  He  wept,  saying,  "  If  thou 
hadst  known,  even  thou,  at  least  in  this 
thy  day,  the  things  which  belong  unto  thy 
peace !  but  now  they  are  hid  from  thine 
eyes."  These  words,  while  applying  pri- 
marily to  the  people  of  Jerusalem,  have 
certainly  a  meaning  for  us,  and  for  all. 

They  remind  us,  in  the  first  place,  of 
the  truth  that  God's  mere  omnipotence  is 
not  enough  to  save  us.  God  being  per- 
fect, and  we  imperfect.  His  power  is,  in 
one  sense,  less  than  our  own.  We  can  do 
wrong  :  He  cannot.  We  can  be  unreason- 
able :  He  cannot.  We  can  be  inconsis- 
tent :  He  cannot.  It  is  clear,  therefore, 
that  if  salvation  means  (as  it  does  mean) 
being  saved  from  our  sins,  God  has  no 
power  to  save  us  in  our  sins.  It  is  clear 
i66 


that  salvation  is  not  a  question  of  disposi- 
tion in  God  at  all.  It  is  simply  a  question 
of  condition  in  ourselves.  What  God's 
disposition  is,  we  know;  His  will,  we  are 
told  expressly,  is  that  all  men  should  be 
saved.  But  the  thing  decisive  is,  not  the 
Divine  will,  but  the  human.  God  could 
not  force  a  soul  to  be  holy.  No  man 
can  be  made  holy  against   his   own  will 

—  in  fact,  without  his  co-operation.  And 
if  there  is  anything  clear  in  the  whole 
Bible,  it  is  this,  that  without  holiness 
there  is,  and  can  be,  no  blessedness. 
Blessedness  cannot  come  from  mere  sur- 
roundings. Heaven,  as  well  as  Hell,  will 
depend  not  upon  where  a  man  is,  but  upon 
what  he  is.  This  is  something  of  which 
we  ought  to  feel  thoroughly  assured. 
Hopes  for  Heaven,  built  on  any  other 
foundation  than  that  of  fitness  for  Heaven, 

—  such  fitness  as  only  God's  own  Spirit 
can  prepare, —  must  prove  to  be  like 
houses  built  in  drifting  sands.  Certainly, 
if   God  had  had  any  arbitrary  power  to 

167 


save  men,  the  Saviour  would  never  have 
had  to  agonize  in  the  Garden,  or  die  upon 
the  Cross.  And  just  as  certainly,  if  the 
Saviour  Himself  had  had  any  power  to  set 
aside  the  eternal  principles  of  judgment, 
He  would  never  have  wept  tears  of  hope- 
less sorrow  over  impenitent  Jerusalem. 
Palm  Sunday,  then,  teaches  us  this  lesson 
—  that  pardon  without  repentance  is  not 
possible.  But  it  teaches  us  something 
more.  It  teaches  us  something  about 
repentance.  The  Jewish  people  had  so 
hardened  themselves  in  impenitence  that, 
to  them,  repentance  was,  practically,  no 
longer  possible.  May  persons  bring 
themselves  into  a  like  condition  now  ? 
Certainly,  so  far  as  human  observation 
goes,  the  tendency  of  character  is  to 
settle  down  into  forms  that,  more  and 
more,  become  unchanging ;  while  our 
Lord,  we  know,  in  warning  His  hearers  of 
the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  spoke  of 
the  danger  of  an  eternal  sin  —  not  an  act, 
but  a  state,  of  sin.  The  intimations  seem 
i68 


to  be  that  there  is  a  possible  condition  in 
which  there  is  no  forgiveness,  not  because 
God  is  not  willing  to  bestow  forgiveness, 
but  because  that  in  man  which  alone 
could  take  forgiveness  has  been  palsied. 
And  surely  in  this  possibility  there  is  a 
warning  —  a  warning  against  putting  off 
that  which  we  ought  to  do  now,  and  could 
do  if  we  would.  The  exhortation  is,  "  To- 
day, if  ye  will  hear  His  voice,  harden 
not  your  hearts."  We  read  of  no  one 
in  the  Bible,  who,  having  put  off  the  call 
of  God  to  a  more  convenient  season,  ever 
gave  heed  to  it  at  all.  I  do  not  say  that 
such  a  thing  is  not  possible.  I  simply 
say  that  the  Bible  is  silent  respecting  it. 
Do  you  remind  me  of  the  case  of  the 
penitent  thief  ?  The  case  of  the  penitent 
thief,  I  answer,  is  not  in  point.  All  that 
the  penitent  thief  had  ever  heard  of  the 
Gospel  was  v/hat  he  heard  in  the  unearthly 
prayer  upon  the  Cross,  "  Father,  forgive 
them ;  for  they  know  not  what  they  do." 
While,  then,  we  look  on  Jerusalem  to-day, 
169 


still  unscathed  by  battles,  still  visited  with 
tidings  of  redemption,  and  yet  lost,  may 
we  not  well  ask  whether  the  Saviour 
might  not  find  among  ourselves  those  for 
whom  all  His  love  and  all  His  pity  could 
not  avail  —  those  for  whom,  though  He 
had  shed  His  precious  blood.  He  could 
shed  now  only  bitter  tears  —  those  for 
whom,  though  He  beheld  in  them  the  pur- 
chase of  redemption,  He  could  only  ex- 
claim, in  helpless  anguish,  "  O  that  ye  had 
known,  at  least  in  this  your  day,  the  things 
that  belong  to  your  peace !  but  now  they 
are  hid  from  your  eyes." 

But  Palm  Sunday  has  another  lesson. 

Although  Jerusalem  was  hopelessly  im- 
penitent —  although  she  had  sinned  away 
her  last  day  of  grace  —  yet  she  still  kept 
up  her  zeal  for  her  religion  —  such  as  her 
religion  was.  She  was  zealous  for  the  law : 
she  was  never  more  punctilious  in  ritual 
observance ;  she  was  never  more  servile 
in  regard  for  the  traditions  of  the  elders. 
Our  Lord  Himself  bore  witness  to  the 
170 


zeal  of  the  Pharisees  —  the  most  rigid  and 
the  most  orthodox  of  all  the  Jews  —  when 
He  told  them  that  they  would  compass 
sea  and  land  to  make  one  proselyte,  even 
though  they  made  him  twofold  more  the 
child  of  hell  than  themselves.      The  most 
hardened,   the   most  impenitent   class   in 
Jerusalem  —  those  whom  the  Saviour  so 
bitterly  denounced  —  went  the  farthest  in 
their  devotion  to  the  Church.     Devotion 
to  the  Church  was,  with  them,  a  thing  of 
unmingled  selfishness,  it  was  a  thing  of 
the  narrowest  partisanship.     In  the  ver- 
nacular of  the  present  day,  the  Church 
was,  with  them,  a  mere  machine.     They 
regarded  our  Lord  very  much  as  a  so-called 
machine-politician  might  regard  a  broad, 
high-minded,    impartial    statesman.      For 
such  a  teacher,  they  simply  had  no  use. 
They  looked  upon  Him  as  the  represen- 
tative of  a  system  that  was  utterly  incom- 
patible with  their  own  pretensions.     They 
could   not   appreciate   the    spirituality   of 
His  teachings.     His  breadth  of  view  — 
171 


His  catholicity  of  spirit  —  aroused  all  the 
venom  of  their  bigotry.  One  who  could 
make  so  little  of  the  Church  as  He  did  — 
one  who  could  exalt  mere  condition  of  the 
soul  so  far  above  the  most  venerable  of 
institutions  —  one  who  could  even  see 
the  marks  of  God's  acceptance  in  persons 
who  stood  altogether  outside  the  pale  of 
the  Church  —  in  Syrophenician  and  Sa- 
maritan—  such  an  one  —  no  matter  how 
good  he  might  seem  to  be  —  had  no 
shadow  of  right  to  call  himself  a  church- 
man. This  was  the  way  they  felt.  When, 
for  the  moment,  our  Lord  seemed  to  be 
coming  over  to  their  side,  they  began  at 
once  to  move  towards  Him.  Had  He 
continued  to  assume  the  state  of  a  Jewish 
King,  they  would  gladly  have  continued 
to  rend  the  air  with  hosannas  to  His 
name,  as  they  did  to-day  all  the  way  from 
Olivet  to  Jerusalem.  This  He  did  not 
do ;  and  within  five  days  their  angry 
voices  were  shouting  for  His  crucifixion. 
Ought  this  not  to  be,  to  all  of  us,  a  warn 
172 


ing  ?  It  is  among  the  first  of  the  warnings 
of  Holy  Week,  and  it  seems  to  me  one 
of  the  most  solemn.  It  warns  us,  that  if 
we  have  nothing  broader,  more  spiritual, 
more  Christ-like,  to  go  upon  than  what  we 
call  our  churchmanship,  we  are  not  only  not 
prepared  for  the  better  life,  but  have  missed 
the  only  way  that  would  lead  us  to  it. 

There  is  still  another  thing  of  which 
Palm  Sunday  may  remind  us.  It  may  re- 
mind us  that  nations,  not  less  than  indi- 
viduals, must  suffer  for  their  sins.  It  may 
remind  us,  further,  that,  though  the  pun- 
ishment of  a  nation's  sins  proceed  along 
lines  purely  natural,  that  fact  does  not 
make  the  punishment,  in  its  ordering,  the 
less  Divine.  The  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
had  been  predicted  as  a  Divine  judgment 
upon  the  Jewish  nation.  It  had  been  so 
predicted  by  our  Lord  Himself.  And  yet 
in  the  means  by  which  it  was  brought 
about  there  was  nothing  to  strike  the 
mind  as  supernatural.  We  know  that 
Jerusalem  was  destroyed  by  the  armies  of 
173 


Rome ;  and  yet  Christ  speaks  of  them  as 
the  armies  of  the  King  of  Heaven.  We 
know  that  the  Roman  armies  were  led  to 
Jerusalem  by  Vespasian  and  Titus — sent 
thither  by  Nero  to  quell  revolt ;  and  yet 
Christ  speaks  of  them  as  sent  forth  of  God. 
The  Roman  Emperor  was  acting  in  his 
own  freedom,  and  for  his  own  purposes  : 
and  yet  Vespasian  and  Titus,  and  their 
legions,  unconsciously  held  their  commis- 
sions from  on  high,  and  accomplished  the 
Divine  will  as  truly  as  ever  did  Moses  or 
Joshua  or  David  or  Saul.  I  make  no  at- 
tempt to  solve  this  mystery.  The  man  who 
attempts  to  solve  all  mysteries — denying 
the  truth  of  any  mystery  that  he  cannot 
solve — may  at  once  be  written  down  as  a 
charlatan.  We  cannot  deny  the  freedom  of 
the  human  will  without  denying  the  whole 
authority  of  consciousness  and  blotting 
out  every  word  that  stands  for  human 
responsibility.  We  cannot  deny  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  Divine  will  without  denying 
the  only  principle  of  unity  and  order  in 
174 


human  history.  For  my  own  part,  I  ac- 
knowledee  both,  and  therefore  I  hold 
human  history  (to  the  extent  that  it  is 
true)  to  be  not  only  human,  but  Divine. 
It  is  Divine  in  the  sense  of  being  a  record 
of  God's  dealings  with  men.  In  this 
sense,  I  believe  the  history  we  are  mak- 
ing to-day  to  be  as  truly  Divine, —  not 
sacred,  for  that  means  written  by  sacred 
authors, — but  as  truly  Divine  as  that 
which  tells  how  the  Israelites  in  their  glory 
put  to  flight  the  armies  of  the  aliens,  or 
how,  in  their  shame,  they  sat  down  and 
wept  by  the  waters  of  Babel. 

In  the  history  of  nations  this  principle 
of  judgment,  that  I  have  been  speaking 
of,  has  applications  that  are  obvious.  Of 
one  such  application,  we  have  all,  perhaps, 
been  thinking.  We  have  all,  perhaps, 
been  thinking  of  a  power  that  once,  for 
the  vastness  of  its  possessions,  for  the 
magnificence  of  its  revenue,  for  the  splen- 
dor of  its  court  and  the  pride  of  its  people, 
held  a  foremost  place  in  the  sisterhood  of 

I7S 


nations.  How  stands  that  power  to-day  ? 
Insignificant  among  the  other  powers  of 
Europe.  Bankrupt,  or  almost  bankrupt 
at  home ;  stripped  of  her  foreign  de- 
pendencies. If  these  results  are  to  be 
thought  of  as  Divine  judgments,  for  what 
were  they  inflicted  ?  The  history  of  Spain 
has  been  the  history  of  protracted  and 
ruthless  cruelty  and  crime  against  every 
dependent  people  beneath  her  sway.  Al- 
most her  last  possession  in  this  western 
world  is  that  fair  island  that  lies  far  to  our 
south,  like  a  beautiful  gem  upon  the  bosom 
of  the  ocean  ;  and  there,  by  outrages  at 
which  all  Christendom  stands  aghast,  she 
has  filled  up  the  measure  of  her  iniquity, 
until  now  a  judicial  blindness  seems  to  have 
fallen  like  a  thick  curtain  upon  her  eyes. 
About  the  war,  now  so  imminent  ^  be- 
tween Spain  and  ourselves,  I  need  not, 
and  do  not  care  to  speak.  Such  a  war 
would  be  a  judgment  not  only  upon  Spain. 

'  This  sermon  was  delivered,  I  believe,  on  April  3,  1898. 
War  was  officially  declared  April  2ist. 

176 


If  ever  a  country  was  cursed  with  the 
spirit  of  greed  and  poHtical  dishonesty, 
and  a  readiness  to  subordinate  the  pubHc 
welfare  to  personal,  or  corporate,  or  par- 
tisan ends,  that  country  is  certainly  our 
own  ;  and  if,  in  the  strife  now  threatening, 
we  should  suffer  (as  it  is  likely  that  we 
should)  we  ought  to  be  able  to  tell  our- 
selves the  reason  why. 

Let  us  hope  that  the  conflict  may  not 
come,  but,  if  it  come,  that  it  may  be  deci- 
sive and  be  brief.  And  may  God  hasten 
the  coming  of  that  day  when  Christian 
nations  shall  have  reason  enough  and  con- 
science enough  to  blot  out  aggressive  war 
from  the  catalogue  of  human  possibilities 
— not  that  we  may  live  in  supine  and  sel- 
fish safety — war  itself  would  be  better  than 
that — but  that  a  fuller  and  nobler  tribute 
of  bloodless  victory  may  be  brought  to 
the  feet  of  the  Prince  of  Peace. 


177 


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